
Digital publishing is beginning to make money - hhs
https://www.axios.com/digital-media-publishing-profits-venture-capital-d08277c3-cde4-49e7-9d8a-615dc22c000b.html
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Traster
This article is very strange. Firstly, the five companies that are listed are
just such an incredibly diverse group of companies. I don't know what's going
on, but I don't _think_ that we can really say that Business Insider is
succeeding for the same reasons as The Information. Is Axios - who have been
on a run with their access journalism succeeding for the same reason the left
wing "Explainer" site Vox is?

There are interesting points to discuss here - regulatory capture through
copyright laws for example. But they seem to have nothing to do with the list
of companies.

But then we reach the end of the article:

> Venture investors known for expecting quick returns tell Axios that they are
> beginning to take a longer view of their investments in publishers that have
> more sustainable business models, like subscriptions.

This is nothing to do with actually discussing success, this is about investor
relations, Axios trying to put out PR either in a run up to going for another
funding round or because some investors are getting antsy. As an investor it
would worry me that my investment is spending its time doing this sort of
thing.

~~~
Doctor_Fegg
Vox is not just a single "left-wing explainer" site, it's a publishing house
with several very prominent brands - the Verge, SB Nation, New York magazine,
etc.

~~~
thundergolfer
You’re right. The article specifies “Vox Media” not Vox.com.

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gbellinoz
I'm a fan of inkl's model (no affiliation). I pay a monthly subscription, and
they send a few cents to the publisher of each article I read. They aggregate
and curate the news (ie. no clickbait) from a few dozen major sources.

Basically, micropayments. First time I've paid for news in a few decades and I
finally feel like I'm supporting good journalism.

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musicale
> A global wave of new copyright laws means that platforms are likely to have
> to start paying publishers for the right to carry their content, even if
> it's just a linked headline or bit of text.

Paying for links seems incompatible with how the web works, and with copyright
law (as URLs are factual information which is not subject to copyright.)
Paying for quoting headlines or tiny excerpts of text also seems to be
incompatible with fair use.

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joegahona
Listing five publishers is hardly "Digital Publishing," and one of those
publishers (The Information) charges $400/year.

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netman21
But at what cost? WashPo, NYT, Bloomberg, even Medium!, are paywalled to the
point of exclusion of the vast potential audience they could have. Axios,NPR,
BBC, and The Guardian, have not succumbed yet. I hope they do not.

~~~
bradleyankrom
I really, really wish some kind of micropayment system had taken root by now.
I don’t want to buy a full-blown subscription to the NYT, but the home page
experience on mobile is truly awful today. Experience is similar on plenty of
other news sites, too.

~~~
vrc
I was the lead for a large tech company's efforts in this area for a few years
(not anymore, so take my comments with a grain of salt). I spoke to many of
the major publishers globally as well as some niche site aggregators,
aggregated local news players, etc. The challenges were manifold. They are
linked between what publishers are succeeding with and what users want.

On the publisher side: Large players were already making good money off of
subscriptions and so micropayments would undercut that. They often didn't want
to co-brand/co-market in any bundle or even under the same product umbrella
with most other major players for brand/other reasons (owning the relationship
with the customer was very important and they didn't want to be
disintermediated anymore), and they often didn't want to be associated with
medium to small publishers because they felt that was free-riding and diluting
their brand. But most importantly, they were confident, as can be seen in
articles like these, that ultimately, they could go it alone and therefore
should. As for small to mid-sized publishers -- the problem really was that
there wasn't enough meat on the bone in terms of willing-to-pay-traffic to
warrant a service provider building a business around it. I think there could
be a viable, non-venture product to be built if you can find the right bundles
of niche pubs to band together.

On the consumer side: Enough people are slowly willing to pay the high fees
for the big sites to not be worth investing in lower tier options. Not enough
people are willing to pay enough for smaller sites to be worth their while.
Many people logically say they are willing to pay a small fee for sites; for
example, let's say publishers were charging $0.01 - $0.05/pageview -- you'd
logically say that's reasonable amount to pay, you'd be shocked how few people
will opt for that, and how many folks who do opt for that feel a sense of
sticker shock when they see the bill.

Other issues: Actually charging consumers on a micro-level is a huge pain if
you charge in currency, and from what I've seen now having worked in crypto,
it will take a while before that model makes sense to the average consumer.
Happy to discuss more.

~~~
inapis
There’s decision fatigue on parts of consumers too. Should i pay for this now
or not? If the publisher demands payment after the fact, then they barely have
any leverage in the transaction. If before, there’ll be a lot of hemming and
hawing (like the app store).

In addition people balk at the subscription price compared to netflix. They
forget that there’s still a price floor to production and a publishers
audience is smaller (and maybe geographically restricted) while netflix has
massive economies of scale and can amortize its cost over the entire
population.

I’m seeing this kind of pricing disparity everywhere (the app store,
publishing and what not). I don’t know what’s the solution. Bigger companies
have distorted pricing expectations of consumers, especially when so many
services/apps are available for free supported with ads.

~~~
vrc
Yeah. The only way to overcome this is to bundle. And bundling with pubs is
hard. How can I charge a single, Netflix like payment to access content from
huge publishers (NYT, WaPo) and small niche blogs? How do I divvy the cash up?
What's worse, because a lot of the web content that people want in this bundle
is time-sensitive, I can't just build a content catalog by licensing
syndicated hits like "Friends" equivalents to buoy the rest. These were
exactly the issues these projects face.

