#68 — The right strategy to monetise your content through reader revenue
Happy Sunday & welcome back. Here’s your curated list of the most important stories and ideas in digital publishing this week! Thanks for supporting Publisher Weekly ❤️
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💯 Top picks
The right strategy to monetise your content through reader revenue [Podcast]
This weeks top story is a 40 minute podcast with Mary Walter-Brown, the founder and CEO of News Revenue Hub, which has been helping new organisations build sustainable revenue streams since 2016. Her advice covers many of the big questions relevant to publishers of all shapes and sizes who are building and growing a membership program!
💸 Business models
To capture reader revenue and engagement, some Indian newsrooms are going back to the once-scorned comments section
“News organizations are interested in building communities because they can potentially help generate user revenue.“
Insider's Pete Spande on balancing subscriptions and advertising [Podcast]
The Digiday podcast catches up with Insider’s CRO Pete Spande, to talk about balancing revenue streams and the reasoning behind their recent merger with eMarketer.
✍️ Modern journalism
After a $2.6M crowdfunding campaign, The Correspondent will have just one full-time US journalist
The Correspondent is hiring a total of five full-time journalists who will be based in Italy, Nigeria, India, London and the U.S.
“The U.S.-based journalist is Eric Holthaus, who will be reporting on climate change from Minnesota, though his stories won’t focus on the U.S.: “I’ll be telling stories that are collaborative, constructive, and transnational”.
“The Daily” hits one billion downloads!
The New York Times’ The Daily podcast has reached a milestone of 1 billion downloads since its launch in February 2017. An impressive achievement for the publisher, alongside having 4.7 million total subscriptions. The outlet credits the success of their podcast growth to the work and creativity of the TimesAudio team.
What exactly is a newspaper edition in today's digital age?
Dive into defining the edition concept in a digital world with Twipe and take a look at replicating print, digital native editions, newsletters and other emerging formats that are replacing printed newspaper editions.
As regulators investigate, Google is now funding the creation of local news sites in the US and the UK
“Google has now committed “millions” of dollars/pounds in support of the creation of three local news sites in two different countries by major media companies (that already have local news sites).”
👩💻 Technology
Your monthly guide to sending better emails is here
The latest compilation of Not A Newsletter is available to read and full of links to the latest in email news and the most important ideas and advice for people who are creating email newsletters.
Use email automation to deliver mini-courses and activate your archives
While on the subject of creating email newsletters – don’t miss this masterclass on how to build email courses to give your subscribers a digestible way to engage with your content and learn at their own pace. With feedback from teams at Pew Research Center, The Washington Post, Buzzfeed and The New Yorker.
BBC experiments with negative news filters to help readers with anxieties
“As one third of audience switches off from news, the public broadcaster is testing a tool that would allow readers to blur out stories that may impact their mental health.”The idea is not to filter or remove news, but to give users the control.
Washington Post builds ad network for publishers to take on Big Tech
The Washington Post are releasing a new product called "Zeus Prime", that will allow companies to buy automated ads as an alternative to buying ads on Google and Facebook.
🤷 WTF?
How the Internet Archive is waging war on misinformation
San Francisco-based non-profit is archiving billions of web pages in a bid to preserve web history. (Requires subscription).
