Meredith and Hearst reveal their secrets for selling lots of print subscriptions online
Meredith’s John Zieser told the FIPP Digital Magazine Media Conference participants in Berlin this week that Meredith sold more than 2.8 million net paid magazine subscriptions from its websites in 2007. Impressive in its own right, but even more so when you consider that Meredith generated more than $150M in online magazine revenue for 2007 primarily from their flagship Internet Hubs, BHG.com and the newly relaunched Parents.com.
When Mequoda asked Zieser the key to their online publishing success, he replied: “We own our content.” The Meredith Digital Library contains millions of videos and photos to which Meredith owns all rights and which all print and online editors can access globally. Text can be rewritten and should be rewritten when it goes online. You’ve got to have the rights to use videos and photos.
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Hearst EVP John Loughlin notes that his company sold 1.6M print subscriptions from its websites in 2007. An insight to the difference in online performance can be had by checking out the key metrics for BHG.com and GoodHousekeeping.com:
* Sources for Key Metrics: # of Webpages and # of Inbound Links from Yahoo! Site Explorer, Online Audience from Compete.com, Print Circulation from the Audit Bureau of Circulations eCirc. Online Media Index (OMI) is calculated by dividing monthly unique visitors by print circulation.
Loughlin also noted that Hearst was playing catch-up in the area of online publishing, having outsourced its online publishing business to iVillage until recently.
The contest they ran last year is a great first step in increasing traffic and email circulation and drawing attention to their newly reclaimed website.
