Forum Moderators: LifeinAsia
It would depend a lot on your market and the competition.
But overall I'd say you'd annoy a lot of people, if not for the money, for the hassle of having to sign up.
Prairie.
It's one thing for a large company with a range of publications like CMP to charge a subscription (I subscribe to Byte.com) it is quite another for an unknown brand to do it.
My experience is that as soon as there is a whiff of people being asked to part with money for things that were previously free you will quickly find people scarpering for the door.
Of course, you may have something that these readers can't get anywhere else without paying for it, in which case you may well have a chance.
Have you tried the other avenues like adsense, affiliate links etc etc? I'd say that they would be an easier, less risky way to go for you.
A survey is one of the things I'm working on - something like "Would you pay for an online widgetsport magazine if it included [blah blah] content?". The thing is I suspect lots of people say they will subscribe and then won't which is why I'd like to hear from people who've done it.
There's a very successful subscription site covering another branch of the same sport, they charge for articles etc but their forum is free which I think is how they draw a lot of people in.
I've used adsense for about a year, played with lots of colours and positions but there's not enough advertisers in the niche (the companies tend to be 3 years behind everyone else) and it's never done more than pay for my hosting. Affiliate marketing is something I'm getting into more seriously after doing it half heartedly for years. I've started using text ads from merchants instead of Adsense now and my CTR is much improved.
I'm thinking of changing one of my sites into a subscription based online magazine and I'll probably charge about £5 a month for it. Has anyone else done it and how many of their existing users decided to pay for it?
I run an online encyclopaedia which deals with roughly 2 million readers every month, and generates revenue through advertising (dealt with by the agency Fastclick). Like you we considered subscription, and some weeks ago started offering an advert free, faster, members only version. Not one response!
My gut feeling is, as others have implied, that WWW users want things for nothing. They don't like paying, plus of course they don't trust strangers with their credit card details!
If you get enough page views, consider Fastclick advertising.
Matt Probert
Were you offering different content or just the same stuff without ads? What I'm thinking of doing is something like atlasf1.com for a different sport.
(Apologies if I'm not allowed to mention URLs of other sites)
