May 7, 2019
Zero incremental cost
Sent by Jonathan Stark on May 7th, 2019
Tech industry analyst Benedict Evans has a wonderful weekly mailing list that I’ve been reading for years. If you’re into the financial, social, and cultural implications of cutting edge of tech, you might want to check it out.
Anyway... in this week’s newsletter, Ben linked to an article about newspapers finally beginning to figure out how to stay afloat in the post-print era:
The Guardian Isn’t Losing Money Anymore
I found this passage about the New York Times particularly interesting:
The New York Times is one of the few other newspapers that have figured this out. It lets you “sponsor a student subscription” to the Times to “inspire the future generation of readers.” That’s a heart-tugging pitch for a certain kind of monied Times reader, and it lets the Times do things like say “you should give us $2,000 now” with a straight face. Of course, giving a digital subscription to a kid costs the Times exactly $0. (Heck, it’s lead generation for eventual paying readers!) But they’ve gotten 30,000 readers to sponsor more than 3 million student subscriptions — which generates something in the neighborhood $10 million for the Times. Just for asking, really.
Here are a few things I’d like to comment on:
- Whoever came up with the “sponsor a student” program is a genius. I wish I knew who it was because I’d like to interview them. (intros welcome!)
- The fact that the Times brought in millions of dollars selling something that costs them virtually nothing is worth meditating on.
- I imagine that some people might be of the opinion that the Times is “ripping off” people who pay all this money for something that is “free” for the paper. IMHO, this would be a fundamental misunderstanding what the NYT is really selling here.
Is there something that you could make available to your clients that they would happily pay for but costs you next to nothing?
Yours,
—J