So the figures finally found their way out – when Manchester Confidential goes (mostly) behind a paywall tomorrow, there’s believed to be 1,300 people who will have paid a subscription for that content.
In Ian Wylie’s report from Saturday’s NUJ conference in London, it emerged the site has got 1,000 people signed up as “friends” i.e. paying £2.50 a month, and 300 digging deeper to be “heroes” and fork out £8.50 monthly.
Update: As can be seen in the comments below, the source of the figures has since informed this blog that these figures were calculated a week before.
So that’s a monthly revenue stream of £2,550 from heroes, £2,500 from friends making a total of £5,050 each month. £60,600 a year.
(Explanations of exactly what readers get for their cash lies here).
Speaking at the conference, the LiverpoolConfidential editor Angie Sammons said the Manchester site currently had 122,000 unique IP adresses in Manchester with the email going out to 70,000 subscribers – 268,000 readers a month.
And the final number of pay subscribers she revealed is a far cry from the anticipated 50-80,000 predicted by publisher Mark Garner back in November.
But regardless of the number, is it enough? Will advertisers continue to find it a compelling proposition? Perhaps the key to how this will all add up in the long run, is exactly how much content remains outside the paywall to provide a large enough reach for advertisers.
Time will tell – and that time isn’t far off.
