Have you read The Hoopla? Started by Wendy Harmer and Jane Waterhouse, The Hoopla is an “online magazine” as described by Wendy Harmer at the Sydney Writers’ Festival last year during an extremely informative panel discussion with Adele Horin and Anne Summers and moderated by Monica Attard. Each of these amazing women are involved in shaking up the media in Australia.
Common to each of these women at the panel discussion was, and clearly still is, how to fund their enterprise.
Anne Summers has been relying on donations as she has a strong commitment to keep ASR freely available to all; ASR is described as having “trademark quality reporting and writing that is sane, factual and relevant”.
Last year Wendy Harmer described her frustration at not being able to raise advertising money for The Hoopla and it seems they have continued to raise funding from advertising despite their evidence that their demographic is “buying cars, downsizing, holidaying and spending money” according to Wendy Harmer. They have recently introduced a “pay wall” with a mixture of pricing. It will cost $0.99 for a casual visit or day pass, $9.99 for one month, $29.99 per quarter and a discounted $75 (from $120) for one year.
“Instead, readers have stormed the site, attracted to its mix of strong opinion, news and softer entertainment stories. In its almost three-year life, The Hoopla has changed too, abandoning some women’s clichés for sharper content.” according to an interview in The Australian
As always, I read such information with my Healthy Numbers hat on and I will be curious to follow how this plays out. Having read through some of the comments there appears to be mixed response to the proposed pricing.Will people pay?
My personal response was to sign up immediately so as to support them, despite not having visited the site for ages.
There is speculation that others in the media might follow their pricing model.
Setting the price for what we offer in our business is one of the most difficult challenges a business owner deals with.
