How to make money by giving things away for free?
October 22, 2010 1:03 PM Subscribe
Help me come up with ways to easily bestow added-value upon subscribers to an online CC-licensed science fiction magazine.
I'm part of the editorial team for a science fiction magazine that, after nearly a year of planning, fund-raising, promotion and general toil, is less than two weeks away from launch! Hooray!
Now the bad news: We still don't know what our subscription model looks like.
Our original intent was to launch straight out of the gates as a print magazine paying professional rates and using a Creative Commons License. Unfortunately, we weren't able to raise enough capital for that to really be feasible. So we have shelved the print aspect for the time being (with the intent to revive it, we have a solid expectation of a large influx of capital next year, if we can survive that long) and are launching as a webzine. We are still paying professional rates and are still CC-licensed.
We do have a business model with several current and future revenue streams built into it, so please don't get all "this isn't 1994, you can't just launch a web business with no plans on how to make money" on me. But the purpose of this question is this: We realized just this week that it would be beneficial to give people the option to buy a subscription to the webzine.
The problem is that all of our content is freely available on the website and we are not, at the moment, publishing physical editions.
So we need to find ways to make people feel like they're getting something of value by buying a subscription. Please note that we are not trying to trick people. We want it to be quite clear what they get for free without subscribing and what extras they get if they do subscribe. The extras don't necessarily have to be fancy though. The people we are aiming for are those who think that we are doing something worthwhile and want to support us. We're just looking for the extra little bonus to make them actually click the paypal button. The other limitation is that, because we're in the middle of the last minute clusterfuck crunch before launch, any subscriber plan that we want to implement needs to be something that we can do relatively easily. Also, we don't want to promise future rewards (print anthologies or iPhone apps, for example) that we may not be able to deliver upon.
The ideas I have come up with:
1. Comments on stories and articles are limited to subscribers.
2. Subscribers can access a special preview area and see stories a few days before non-subscribers.
And that's it. To make matters worse, the rest of the editorial team is not thrilled with either of these proposals. Their problem with #1 is that they believe that not allowing everyone to comment will make it impossible for us to foster discussion and a sense of community. Their problem with #2 is that they don't believe anyone would actually find it valuable (what's the difference between a story every Friday and a story every Monday?).
So.... help? Additional ideas? Better implementations or supporting arguments for the two ideas I've already had?
note to self: use next week's question to ask why animated jack o' lantern gifs are so frigging scary
I'm part of the editorial team for a science fiction magazine that, after nearly a year of planning, fund-raising, promotion and general toil, is less than two weeks away from launch! Hooray!
Now the bad news: We still don't know what our subscription model looks like.
Our original intent was to launch straight out of the gates as a print magazine paying professional rates and using a Creative Commons License. Unfortunately, we weren't able to raise enough capital for that to really be feasible. So we have shelved the print aspect for the time being (with the intent to revive it, we have a solid expectation of a large influx of capital next year, if we can survive that long) and are launching as a webzine. We are still paying professional rates and are still CC-licensed.
We do have a business model with several current and future revenue streams built into it, so please don't get all "this isn't 1994, you can't just launch a web business with no plans on how to make money" on me. But the purpose of this question is this: We realized just this week that it would be beneficial to give people the option to buy a subscription to the webzine.
The problem is that all of our content is freely available on the website and we are not, at the moment, publishing physical editions.
So we need to find ways to make people feel like they're getting something of value by buying a subscription. Please note that we are not trying to trick people. We want it to be quite clear what they get for free without subscribing and what extras they get if they do subscribe. The extras don't necessarily have to be fancy though. The people we are aiming for are those who think that we are doing something worthwhile and want to support us. We're just looking for the extra little bonus to make them actually click the paypal button. The other limitation is that, because we're in the middle of the last minute clusterfuck crunch before launch, any subscriber plan that we want to implement needs to be something that we can do relatively easily. Also, we don't want to promise future rewards (print anthologies or iPhone apps, for example) that we may not be able to deliver upon.
The ideas I have come up with:
1. Comments on stories and articles are limited to subscribers.
2. Subscribers can access a special preview area and see stories a few days before non-subscribers.
And that's it. To make matters worse, the rest of the editorial team is not thrilled with either of these proposals. Their problem with #1 is that they believe that not allowing everyone to comment will make it impossible for us to foster discussion and a sense of community. Their problem with #2 is that they don't believe anyone would actually find it valuable (what's the difference between a story every Friday and a story every Monday?).
So.... help? Additional ideas? Better implementations or supporting arguments for the two ideas I've already had?
note to self: use next week's question to ask why animated jack o' lantern gifs are so frigging scary
I would pay money to have all your fiction show up in my Instapaper stream. At the very least you could sell PDFs.
I don't like the closed comments idea, although a sub-forum just for subscribers (with added author interaction or whatever) might work.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:36 PM on October 22, 2010
I don't like the closed comments idea, although a sub-forum just for subscribers (with added author interaction or whatever) might work.
posted by These Premises Are Alarmed at 1:36 PM on October 22, 2010
Best answer: I've wished existing online sf magazines offered DRM-free epubs by paid subscription -- I like reading on my ereader; I don't like reading anything lengthy online. I'd be willing to pay for the difference. (You'd want to offer something readable on the Kindle, too.)
posted by Zed at 2:05 PM on October 22, 2010
posted by Zed at 2:05 PM on October 22, 2010
Best answer: You could let people view the site without ads. You can also make annoying messages for people who have ad-blockers installed. Daily Kos does this.
posted by oreofuchi at 2:19 PM on October 22, 2010
posted by oreofuchi at 2:19 PM on October 22, 2010
Best answer: I've been a slush reader for a print SF mag and I think you'd reach a lot more people online.
How about offering a bonus PDF for subscribers? Enlist your best writers and artists and offer something special.
Strange Horizons and other sites do fundraising drives in different months. Maybe that model would help you, too.
Good luck!
posted by dragonplayer at 2:36 PM on October 22, 2010
How about offering a bonus PDF for subscribers? Enlist your best writers and artists and offer something special.
Strange Horizons and other sites do fundraising drives in different months. Maybe that model would help you, too.
Good luck!
posted by dragonplayer at 2:36 PM on October 22, 2010
To qualify my first statement, I meant that I wouldn't move to an exclusively print edition. But that's because I wouldn't want to deal with waiting on printers and the cost of postage, especially to cities outside North America.
Also, thanks for paying pro rates!
posted by dragonplayer at 2:42 PM on October 22, 2010
Also, thanks for paying pro rates!
posted by dragonplayer at 2:42 PM on October 22, 2010
Hey Duff! How goes the querying? ;) I'm a pretty heavy reader of SF mags, and none that I've seen, even the big guns, have particularly active message boards/comment sections even when they're offered for free.
But Zed has it: I have a nook, and I would (and do!) pay for the ability to download epubs onto it. It's easy to learn how to create them, via Calibre, for free. As ereader sales increase, this is going to become something that is increasingly necessary for periodicals. Really, jump in now.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:47 PM on October 22, 2010
But Zed has it: I have a nook, and I would (and do!) pay for the ability to download epubs onto it. It's easy to learn how to create them, via Calibre, for free. As ereader sales increase, this is going to become something that is increasingly necessary for periodicals. Really, jump in now.
posted by PhoBWanKenobi at 6:47 PM on October 22, 2010
subscription podcast content?
Ad-free RSS feeds?
Constantly updated PDF anthology?
Kindle editions (You can create and sell kindle editions of RSS-enabled content like blogs that people can subscribe to on their kindles)?
iOS app?
website skins?
contributor blogs?
Post-Mortem QA with authors (via podcast subscription or included in PDF anthology)? Members-only chat rooms?
posted by anotherfluke at 10:50 AM on October 23, 2010
Ad-free RSS feeds?
Constantly updated PDF anthology?
Kindle editions (You can create and sell kindle editions of RSS-enabled content like blogs that people can subscribe to on their kindles)?
iOS app?
website skins?
contributor blogs?
Post-Mortem QA with authors (via podcast subscription or included in PDF anthology)? Members-only chat rooms?
posted by anotherfluke at 10:50 AM on October 23, 2010
Escapeartists.org just offered exclusive stories to people who commented in a particular forum. No fees, just looking to get more podcast listeners involved in their community.
Other than that they just seem to consistently remind people that they need donations to pay their authors.
posted by garlic at 6:36 AM on October 30, 2010
Other than that they just seem to consistently remind people that they need donations to pay their authors.
posted by garlic at 6:36 AM on October 30, 2010
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Also, there are many variations on #1 that might be worth trying as you seek a way to balance broad community-building with incentives to subscribe — what if anyone could post comments, but only subscribers had karma/upvoting/downvoting/favoriting/flagging privileges that allowed them to help with moderation, letting them be the ones who choose to highlight especially good forum/comment contributions? What if article comments, or some forums, were open to non-subscribers, but there was still a subscriber-only forum that carried some special perks like regularly scheduled author Q & A sessions?
posted by RogerB at 1:25 PM on October 22, 2010