Seven launches paid model for K-Zone
SEVEN Media Group's Pacific Magazines today begins its bid to make money out of its online content with the relaunch of tween boys' website K-Zone.
While most of the site remains free, it now includes a small amount of "VIP” content that kids can access by paying either a $2.95 a month website-only subscription or a $69.95 a year print and online package subscription.
If the experiment was successful, Pacific would next year roll out similar subscriber-only VIP content on its Total Girl and Girlfriend websites, said youth titles publisher Mychelle Vanderburg.
"It’s the first trial Pacific Magazines has done of a subscription model,” she said. "Globally, publishers have been grappling with this: how do we make online a profitable part of the business we can grow and leverage off without cannibalising (sales of) the magazine?”
Pacific believed its paid-content experiment was a first for an Australian magazine publisher, Ms Vanderburg said.
"We have definitely not been unable to uncover any other youth publication that has a paid subscription model.”
The revamped site, which has an eye-catching 3D design that took a year to design and build, now offers an experience closer to that of kids sites such as Disney’s Club Penguin and Mind Candy’s Moshi Monsters, which also offer a mix of free and paid content.
The relaunch coincides with the release of the January issue of K-Zone featuring the magazine’s annual K-Kash promotion, in which kids solve codes to earn points they can redeem online on real and virtual prizes.
Subscribers will get additional K-Kash points, as well as access to extra games and other exclusive content.
K-Zone is aimed primarily at boys aged seven to 14 and as of June had an average circulation of 50,272 copies a month, down from 55,445 copies a year earlier. its website averages slightly more than 20,000 unique visitors per month, but during last January’s K-Kash promotion that soared to about 85,000 unique browers, who on average spent about 52 minutes on the site per session.
"It’s a great time to launch (the paid content model) because we get all that traffic so we can show them the benefits,” said K-Zone editor Daniel Findlay.
Pacific hoped to convert anywhere up to 10 per cent of the website visitors to paid subscribers and in calendar 2011 aimed for the site’s revenue to be 70 per cent from advertising and the rest from memberships, Ms Vanderburg said.