PG's Paid Members-Only Site
Site: (Pittsburgh) Post-Gazette.com
Owner: Block Communications
Key executives: Chris Chamberlain, president and Pat Scanlon, Director of Interactive Media, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.
Summary: The (Pittsburgh) PostGazette.com, a free site with a paid e-edition, launched PG+ in September 2009 after extensive market research showed that paid content needed to be exclusive and rich, going deeper into Pittsburgh-centric issues. The new premium section “PG+” is treated as a separate business that resides on the postgazette.com url.
Challenge: To create a niche site that readers would pay to join.
Strategy: PG+ is built on the principle that people are not paying for sports content, they are paying for the experience. The premium channel is a membership club that includes numerous benefits. It resides on the PostGazette URL, but has a different look and feel than a newspaper website. Originally the site was established as club that would be part sports, part politics and part membership discount. Premium elements include:
*A blog called "The Feed," updated throughout the day, focusing on local news and sports.
*Interactivity with writers, including the ability to post in a live chat between two columnists.
*A heavy emphasis on sports. Pittsburgh Steelers reporters provide "extras" aincluding blogs from the locker room, additional video content, podcasts and produced features. Channels also cover the local ice hockey team, and college and high school football.
*Political coverage from their Washington, D.C. correspondent with extra insights into "Beltway issues that affect us” (mostly deleted since the reorg of the channel).
A membership card allows subscribers to access perks and discounts at cultural attractions, stores and restaurants. Post Gazette President Chris Chamberlain says visitors can use the discounts to "make back the price of the membership on the first purchase." To reward and retain snowbirds and the large number of site visitors that have relocated from the area, PG+ staff are working on getting discount coupons and other incentives from national chains.
Memberships pricing has two options: month to month for $3.99, or $36 a year or annually for $2.95 a month. Chamberlain says the majority of members are annual and that early results show most monthly members are renewing.
Results: Membership in the site is aimed at the 2 to 3% of circulation which is at 220,000. After six months the site was refined and doubled memberships. Find the full case study here.
Lessons learned:
• "User driven revenue streams are crucial to any digital media company who used to only have a newspaper. The more we can bring opportunities to users that allow them to transact with us, our brand,our content and Pittsburgh as a whole, the better off our company will be."
• Sports fans are a potential base for a passionate local community.
• The "experience" of club membership, ie chatting with the staff and with others in the community, is as important as news coverage.
• Reassessing membership site - ie testing and refining - can double the profitability. PG+ used the approach of including lots of feeds and then refining the site to eliminate what visitors did not use, and focusing on the most utilized sections and "the experience".
The author, Alisa Cromer is publisher of a variety of online media, including LocalMediaInsider and MediaExecsTech, developed while on a fellowship with the Reynolds Journalism Institute and which has evolved into a leading marketing company for media technology start-ups. In 2017 she founded Worldstir.com, an online magazine, to showcases perspectives from around the world on new topic each month, translated from and to the top five languages in the world.
