Strategies for publisher success

At Axate, we know that moving to a reader-revenue based strategy isn’t as simple as just adding a payment system to your site. Every publisher is different, with a wide variety of readers and pre-existing revenue strategies – which means our approach to working with each publisher needs to be different, too.

Axate offers individualised support for each publisher we work with, drawing on our team’s extensive knowledge of the media sector, and what we’ve learned by implementing Axate’s casual payments on a wide range of sites already, to ensure that you can grow a sustainable new stream of reader revenue.

Here are four ways that Axate tailors implementation to meet publishers’ needs:

1. A variety of pricing strategies

We’ve developed a variety of pricing options to suit publishers’ revenue strategies. We know that publishers know best when it comes to their readership and product; with Axate, publishers maintain full control over their pricing, with full access to the advice and support of our team.

We’ve developed the following pricing options available to publishers:

PAY-AS-YOU-GO

‘Pay-as-you-go’ lets people pay per article without subscription or complicated sign up process. Readers simply register once, upload a little money to their Axate account, and pay for what they want, when they want. They can spend that money across any of the sites using Axate, which grows weekly.

Publishers combine pay-as-you-go with a ‘cap’ or ‘free point’ – once you’ve bought one or two or more articles, you get full access for a day or week, a bit like a cover price at newsstand. For example, someone reading a site where articles are priced at £0.50p each might read three articles, and hit the £1.50p “free point”. They’ll then get unlimited access to the rest of the site for the rest of the day or week – whatever time period the publisher has decided.

The ‘free point’ ensures that avid readers get rewarded, and encourages casual readers to develop a habit.

DAY PASS

Some publishers opt for ‘day pass’ pricing: pay for one article, and get access to the rest of the site for the day. It’s the online equivalent of buying a newspaper in a shop – you pay once, and read that day’s news.

Some local publishers prefer this pricing, because it closely reflects the relationship that readers have with their product; it’s the whole product, not the individual articles, which they value most.

CASUAL PAYMENTS ALONGSIDE SUBSCRIPTIONS

Axate can work as the only means of reader payment for a site, or it can be implemented alongside an existing subscription offering.

Offering a way to pay casually with Axate gives readers the chance to ‘try before you buy’: to sample the product before committing to an ongoing subscription. This way, readers aren’t faced with a hard paywall, given the only the choice to commit to a repeat payment or to not read the articles at all.

Axate can work as a funnel for new subscribers, or simply enables publishers to a way to monetise those casual readers who love your product – enough to pay for it – but aren’t (and may never be) ready to subscribe. With paywalls going up around high-quality online content, and the average reader sourcing their news from a variety of places, readers are stuck having to narrow down the content they subscribe to. With Axate, readers can still get that range of information, and publishers get paid for it.

PAY-IF-YOU-CAN

We developed our ‘pay-if-you-can’ option in direct response to the Covid-19 pandemic. At a time when news was most valuable, its principle revenue stream, advertising, collapsed.

‘Pay-if-you-can’ gives publishers a way to generate reader revenue, but without locking anyone out from the vital information they need. Some local publishers we work with pivoted to pay-if-you-can as a temporary measure, and are now returning to a pay-as-you-go strategy.

For some publishers we combine this with an optional one-off contribution. Readers who want to contribute more to support a site they particularly value can do so via a one-off additional payment via Axate.

2. Page notice optimisation , AB testing & UX feedback

We develop our page notices to match a publisher’s look and feel, their pricing strategy, their marketing style and overall tone of voice. We test our page notices, tracking response and getting user feedback to develop the most effective page notice for publishers.

Here are a few examples of different page notices on Axate publishers with varying appeals to readers, pricing strategies and visuals.

3. Marketing

To make a launch with Axate as successful as possible, we support publishers in planning launch marketing campaigns and offers. The aim of these campaigns are to attract new readers, familiarise existing readers with Axate’s casual payment system, and re-engage lapsed readers or subscribers who might otherwise lose the habit of using your site.

A marketing campaign might include:

Introductory pricing offers and complimentary credit offers
Email campaigns to activate your newsletter audience, re-enage lapsed triallists and lapsed subscribers
Promoting a new publisher to existing Axate wallet holders based on their reading interest
VIP complimentary credit coupons for you to offer

4. Social Media Support

We provide a ‘social media starter pack’ that is customised to each publisher’s product.

Social media can be used to familiarise readers with Axate, and communicate to readers why publishers are introducing casual payments to support their work.

Our social media pack lays out a three-month plan to maximise a publishers’ launch with Axate. It includes:

Top tips for boosting engagement on social media
Graphics, images and videos to explain how Axate works on a publishers’ site
Pointers on writing an editor’s letter: what it should include, best ways to communicate about Axate, and how to give context as to why publishers are introducing charging to their site
Templates and ideas for posts on different platforms
Tips for maintaining momentum on social media after launch
Best ways to measure impact, track performance and adjust social media strategy accordingly

Here’s an example of a customised GIF showing how Axate works on a publisher’s site: