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Founded in 2008, DailySocial is Indonesia's #1 tech portal that covers startups, apps, gadgets, gaming, social media, enterprise, future technology, and the creative industry in Indonesia.
The Challenge
In addition to existing revenue streams such as ads and sponsored content, DailySocial started exploring a subscription offering in the first half of 2020. But, as with all publishers, it had to answer some critical questions to ensure the success of its subscription model:
- Is its content worth paying for? Does its audience see value in paying for its content? If not, it would first have to invest in its editorial and content teams and improve the quality of its content.
- Will its audience (95% from Indonesia) pay for a subscription? According to Reuters, only 19% of Indonesians pay for online news. So, the willingness to pay can be considered low.
- How to build a strong subscriber funnel? Globally, only 1% of a publisher’s total audience converts into paid subscribers.
DailySocial knew they needed data-backed evidence for the above questions to start planning a paid subscription revenue model. That’s when they started looking for tools that could help them measure content quality and audience propensity to subscribe/pay, and stumbled across Fewcents.
The Solution and the Approach
DailySocial implemented the Fewcents Paywall in Aug 2020. Fewcents Paywall is an easy pay-per-content plugin for any content format - article, podcast, video, file downloads. This flexibility to monetize any format appealed to DailySocial. It is using the Fewcents Paywall:
For its premium articles to nurture daters (non-committal audience; non-subscribers) and build a strong subscriber funnel
For its downloadable special reports to introduce a new revenue stream
In addition to this, DailySocial has gathered a wealth of first-party data that offers actionable insights on who is willing to pay, how much, for which content (and from where). Such insights help answer the 3 critical questions that DailySocial had before introducing subscriptions. Armed with data, in November 2020, DailySocial launched its subscription offering.
The Results
Fewcents became a methodical, data-backed first step towards a subscription. More than 8% of its current subscribers started out with Fewcents pay-per-article before converting into subscribers.
It has also experienced incremental revenue growth from its special reports. Average monthly report downloads increased by 2.7x with a pay-per-download model. Moreover, it has also seen an average MoM increase of 54% in paid RPM since May 2021. More than 71% of these payments came from local digital wallets in Indonesia (Fewcents supports local payments methods across 70+ countries). In addition to all of this, the Fewcents Publisher Success team constantly ran experiments to optimize for growth, based on the knowledge gathered from working with multiple other publishers.
Value Delivered
First Step to Subscription
- 8.13% of existing subscribers started using Fewcents before signing up for a subscription.
Incremental Revenue
- New revenue channel: Average monthly report downloads increased by 2.7x with pay-per-download
- Average MoM increase of 54% in paid RPM since May 2021
Quote:
“Fewcents helped contribute to our subscription growth. More than 8% of our existing subscribers started using Fewcents first, before signing up for our subscription.''
Rama Mamuaya, CEO, Dailysocial Indonesia
