By Mark Buckshon
Publisher, Ontario Construction News
In the past month, you may have noticed changes in the level of access to Ontario Construction News’ content. I’m writing this post to explain the changes and outline how you can gain the most value from your time with Ontario’s first digital daily construction trade newspaper.
As OCN’s third anniversary approached earlier this year, we sought out ideas to improve the newspaper’s editorial quality and enhance bidding opportunities data through DataBid.com.
Initially, we set out to produce a custom-made solution, with offshore developers working several months on the concept.
Originally, we intended to develop a comprehensive daily listing of public bidding opportunities, rather than the sampling currently available on the site. We anticipated that the number of leads available would increase by as a factor of 10 – with upwards of 100 opportunities each day.
Of course, this sort of enhanced service could not be totally free – but our anticipated pricing would make it much more economical than competing leads services.
However, is there really demand for this leads service? Other organizations have provided leads and bidding opportunities for years (even decades) and we were concerned that clients for these services would not rush to change providers – and conceivably most businesses which wanted to purchase leads services would already be doing business with someone else.
Some business ideas can be tested out but others need to be put into practice. As the clock ticked, and the developers encountered one delay after another, I simply didn’t know how well our planned subscription service would work.
Then, as winter turned to spring, I learned that Google was introducing a new service for publishers. The goal: To help publications generate subscription revenue to reduce their dependence on advertising, and achieve greater financial stability in a business environment where the tech giants have sucked out much of the business life from conventional print and electronic media.
The “Google News Initiative” program included sessions outlining the value of building readership engagement through regular newsletters. Here, we were already on track, with the daily Ontario Construction News e-letter.
The Subscribe with Google service, part of the initiative, also included cloud-based systems that would allow us to sell subscriptions.
It turns out that Google also understands the importance of allowing a soft-landing to the paid subscription process, with a metered paywall option. Here, we can allow casual or occasional readers access to the newspaper’s content, but if you go above the basic limit, you will be initially encouraged to sign up for the e-letter, and then – if you are viewing more than a few stories each week – you will need to subscribe to access further content.
In May, I introduced the new system quietly. I chose the low-profile launch, in part, because Google staff described their development of the metered paywall system as an “alpha-level” project; in other words, we weren’t just early adaptors of a new process – we were the first to implement it.
With Google’s help, we quickly solved a problem that would have made the system impractical: Surely, it is unreasonable for us to expect advertisers (as well as our staff and contractors) to pay for subscription access. The solution is an ‘override’ tool that we can quickly implement on a case-by-case basis. Advertisers and others who should never need to pay for their subscriptions don’t need to worry about the paywall.
The other challenge: Setting prices and rules for paid subscriptions. I could see quickly that there wasn’t much demand for the full DataBid.com leads service option; so I adapted pricing for the general editorial content and made it so inexpensive that no one could say the price was excessive. We set the price at less than $5.00 a month for a monthly subscription, with a truly modest $24.95 (plus HST) annual subscription option.
As the test has progressed, we are seeing many individuals requesting the free e-letter, and a more modest – but still encouraging – group of paid subscribers taking up the $24.95 annual subscription option. So far no one has requested the full leads service package.
What do you get for your money? Once you subscribe, you should be free of content paywall restrictions. You can view every published story, any time you want. And your subscription fee will be applied to improving our editorial quality, allowing us to contract with additional writers who can dig deeper into the issues affecting the province’s construction industry.
We’re combing this subscriber revenue with Heritage Canada grants for our sister magazines, Ottawa Construction News and Ontario Construction Report, to add tens of thousands of dollars in additional editorial resources.
Of course, once you are a subscriber, you are also our client, and can request support, suggest story ideas, or share your opinions and insights into the coverage you would like to see.
If you wish to subscribe, you can either make your request through the links set up by Google in the metered paywall, or directly through our subscription request page at https://ontarioconstructionnews.com/subscriptions.
We hope you’ll join us as as a subscriber. If you have any questions about the process, you can reach me by email at buckshon@ontarioconstructionnews.com.