Slovakian publishers’ new joint paid content initiative has made €40,000 in its debut month.
On May 2, nine major news and magazine publishers plugged parts of their sites in to Piano Media, a shared paid content system.
That number looks small but Piano’s founder TomáÅ¡ Bella tells paidContent:UK: “We have a population of 2.5 million internet users and GDP at 73 percent of European Union average. This is a relatively poor country with not that many people used to paying via the internet, so the media here are really very, very happy with the result.”
Despite disclosing a first revenue figure, the publishers do not want to quantify the actual number of Piano subscribers, who pay either €2.90 per month, €0.99 per week or €29 per year for access to each of the sites. live. “We achieved our subscriber target within two days of launching the system,” Bella claims.
Of the revenue raised, 70 percent goes to participating publishers, balanced according to time spent.
Traffic at some of the publishers fell little or, in some cases, actually increased, Bella claims. “The readership of more than half of the media that joined Piano has risen after entering our payment system.”
Piano wants to expand in Europe.