This article on the Huffington Post does a good job of summarising the case against charging for online subscriptions.

What makes this an interesting debate is seemingly something that none of the main combatants can see: the “free vs subscriptions” debate is not either/or, winner takes all. It’s horses for courses (or some less cliched variant thereof). For some sites, such as many of the high-end financial sites, a paywall works just fine. For other sites, where similar content is available elsewhere, a paywall won’t work.

You might even say it’s a matter of commercial judgement.

For people to accuse the other side of “not getting it”, or being thieves, is to miss the point. But why let facts get in the way of a good argument?

You might remember some time ago I wrote about an offer from Autosport magazine that I received by email, where I got a free trial issue of the magazine, and then six issues for £1 total, before reverting to a standard-priced subscription.

Well, I’ve now had two issues of the magazine and they are very good indeed. I will be keeping my subscription going.

Conclusion: if your magazine is exceptional, then a targeted free-issue offer is likely to work well.

A report by Continental Research, covered in the Guardian here,
argues that micropayment systems would be more palatable to consumers than monthly or annual subscription systems.

Apparently “When it came to micropayments, 35% of respondents said they would be prepared to pay 2p per article, 22% would pay 5p, 13% 10p and just 6% 20p for each piece of online content.”

Even at 2p per article, that’s a CPM rate of £20, which is more than most sites can charge for ads! It almost sounds too good to be true!

Over the last few years a plethora of different surveys have reached very different conclusions about micropayments (maybe a case of “He who pays the piper calls the tune”).

I’ve been involved with the internet since about 1993, and I can remember talk of micropayments going back as far as the year dot. So how come we’ve had 15 years and micropayments still haven’t taken off?

The fundamental issue here is one of psychology. It’s covered well in the book Free, by Chris Anderson.

If you pay a subscription, you only have to think about it once. After that, all your access appears free. If you use micropayments, every time you want to access an article your brain has to ask itself “Is it worth it?”. That’s the extra cognitive step that leads to trouble.

You might argue that mobile phones successfully use a Pay As You Go model, which is similar to micropayments for articles. So what’s the difference? Probably there are several. First, phone calls have never been free, so there’s no expectation that they should be. Second, perhaps people value the human interaction of a phone call more highly than reading an article, so they’re more willing to pay. Third, you only have to pay your phone bill to one company, whereas with micropayments you wouldn’t want to set up a new account with every provider.

But doesn’t Apple effectively use micropayments for the apps in its iPhone app store? Yes, it does. And similar to the Pay As You Go phone model above, it works for two reasons. One: users have been conditioned that apps were never solely free. Two: you always pay the bill to Apple, very easily, through an existing account that you’ve already created.

So what’s the bottom line? If there’s any hope for micropayments, there needs to be one single micropayment system that covers the vast majority of sites. Maybe the publishing industry just needs to get together and agree a standard system. Then we’ll finally see if the survey respondents who say they’d use micropayments will put their money where their mouth is! I’m not holding my breath.

Affinity deals are an arrangement between a magazine and a company to promote a product or service in a more creative way than simply running an advertisement. The magazine often benefits by being able to offer more benefits to its readers and subscribers.

Here are a few ideas for affinity deals:

• A company donates a prize to be given to one of your paid subscribers, making subscribers feel more appreciated
• Readers are offered a free gift when they subscribe to your magazine
• Readers receive a 10% discount card for a certain place when they subscribe to your magazine
• Other company provides a champagne evening for related readers with discounts in store (the store usually makes a lot of money for this, so both parties win)
• Slightly at a tangent, the magazine may give away the advertising space for free and then take a share of profits generated by the promotion. This lessens risk for the company if they are unwilling to buy an ad up-front.

We’ll have more updates on the blog in the future showing you how to find potential affinity partners.

Here’s a very effective method that Autosport magazine (published by Haymarket) is using to get subscribers. It worked a treat on me today!

As Formula 1 fans will know, British driver Jenson Button won the F1 World Championship a week ago. Since I already subscribe to the Autosport online edition, I got an email with the offer “Celebrate Jenson’s victory with a free issue of Autosport”.

I texted the phone number given in the email, and about 30 seconds later(!) I got a call from Autosport. The man took my name and address for the free copy. Now for the clever bit:

He then told me that for a further £1 in total I could receive a further 6 copies of the magazine. Payment would be by direct debit. I would then move onto a standard subscription, saving 15% on the cover price. I can also cancel at any time. He explained the offer very clearly and very well. (I think a lot of effort had gone into the sales script). This all sounded like a good idea, so I said “Sign me up!”. I’m one of those odd people who can remember my bank account details off the top of my head, so it was a smooth sign-up process; I suspect it might be a different story for some people!

So what just happened? I was given a free issue, then up-sold with a very small commitment of £1. I might well enjoy the magazine and automatically move onto their full subscription without having to do anything. Good work.