What Does BoLS Prime Pay For
A BoLS Reader wrote in asking a simple, but unexpected question: what will the fees for Prime pay for? Here’s the answer.
The question was not in the sense of what do you get but what do we use the subscription fees for? This question caught me off-guard because, to me, the answer is obvious: everything. Prime today is one of the keys to the growth and health of our entire business model, a key source of revenue and hedge against the uncertain seas of the internet. But perhaps it’s not as apparent on the other side of the screen. So I thought I’d explain it all in a bit more detail. Some of this will probably seem like inside baseball. But you may find it interesting if you’re a Prime subscriber or if you’re interested in the economics of digital publishing or both.
The goal and scope of Prime remain the same: break down the ‘fourth wall’ of BoLS and give our readers access to all the collective knowledge of our editorial staff. It also allows us to share content that cannot be included easily, or sometimes at all, into our conventional news and editorial writing. Our goal is to provide a deeper layer of reporting, insight, detail, and previews that don’t easily fit into our regular schedule of news and editorials.
A Look Behind the Curtain
So now, what does BoLS Prime pay for? Alright, let’s take a look:
Until now, almost 100% of BoLS revenue came from various kinds of advertising. We are starting Prime for several reasons. A critical one was that we know the digital advertising market is going in an unpredictable direction globally, especially for independent publishers.
Here are some data points. Between 2015 and 2018, many online publishers saw a 50% drop in online revenue. LOOK OUT BELOW! Imagine if you worked just as hard day in and day out at your job, only to see your paycheck halved in 3 years. Welcome to running internet websites for many publishers.
This would, of course, have been catastrophic but BoLS is a spry, scrappy operation. We have the flexibility to try out different models, experiment with advertising options, and even grow our network of gaming websites.
But expenses are ever-growing. This comes as a surprise to many – BoLS has an office here in Austin Texas and a staff of about half a dozen people (who you’ll meet in more detail soon), as well as multiple regular outside contributors. We are always working 24/7/365, and striving to bring you, our core readers, everything relevant to the biggest games in the industry as fast as possible. Our expenses pay the bills, keep the lights on, and put food on the table for our staff. We know that expenses will only go up in the future. This is due to everything from hosting costs – our servers are certainly not free – to bringing on more full-time writers to give you ever more original content on everything from miniatures wargaming to RPGs.
Where Do Subscriptions Go?
So what do your BoLS Prime membership fees pay for? Simply: running the company. Prime is now the second leg of our entire business model. It’s not differentiated to one part of our operations or another in any way. Prime is simply a subscription to BoLS. It pays for running everything.
The big-picture goal is that we are transitioning from a business model based almost exclusively on advertising to one which is diversified, and based mainly on direct subscriptions from our core readers.
A secondary goal is increasing benefits to have a better workplace and attract and (more importantly) retain our staff. Doing these two things at the same time will be challenging to pull off. So far, we are in good shape, and we are early in the process.
The fundamental goal of the service is to achieve a healthy balance of subscription and advertising revenues over the long term.
That’s why we’re launching both the standard and ad-free versions of BoLS Prime. Different readers have different capacities to support us and different things they’re interested in. What we’ve been working toward is a subscription mix that allows us to get a healthy percentage of total revenue from subscriptions – a combination of Prime, Ad-Free Prime, while keeping the majority of content free to the public and the rest available for a small fee (our BoLS Prime subscribers).
The ultimate goal of the program is to move from us making the decision for everyone about how they can support us, to giving you three different choices, and less you make the decision.
If those launch successfully, the combination should put us where we need to be over the course of the next year. But growing Prime will remain our core focus. Nothing is permanent on the internet, of course. But with our three tiers of offerings, we believe we’ll have a solid foundation to build on and grow with going forward.
Having as large a membership base as possible at launch is critical to the success of BoLS Prime and the entirety of BoLS. I sincerely hope you can join us today. It means a great deal to every member of our organization and me. Look for the first BoLS Prime post this Wednesday. I think you’re going to like!
What’s BoLS Prime?
How do I sign up? Click right here.
~If you have any further questions, please email us!
