Our Hometown, Inc. - - Page 29

Update: this report was prepared 7/26/2004 and things have improved. See here and here for more information. The Our Hometown online subscription model is unique in the market place today in its selection of which pages are available to online subscribers only and which pages are available to the public. Many newspaper websites make the archives available to subscribers only and grant access to the recent news to the public, […]

Everyone in the community newspaper industry knows their readers skew older, so it was no surprise when a study of the ages of digital subscribers to the Times Record showed a considerable number were above age 50. This study was the subject of an article featured in: The report compares user age demographics before implementing a paywall and the digital subscribers to the website after thepaywall went up.

This study: Projecting Community Newspaper Paywall Revenues, characterizes the surge in digital subscription revenue seen during the first year at the Oil City (PA) Derrick. The website generated 50% of first year revenue after two months with a hard paywall. The data suggests this surge pattern can be used to predict any newspaper’s first year paywall revenue as early as sixty days post-paywall.