Rational Idealist

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I’m amused by the US media’s understanding of European geography / economy:

Slovakia’s news payment system going large in July

Piano Media, the joint web news payment system operating in Slovakia and Slovenia, is preparing to launch in a third, larger market this summer, after recently taking funding for globalisation. “The third country we are launching in July will be much larger than the two we already have combined,…

…

There is a question mark over whether Piano can replicate even these small numbers outside its own back yard…

via: paidcontent.org

… to think that slovenia is slovakia’s backyard, or that they are both the same backyard, is like saying US and Panama are the same backyard.

on the other hand, I’m glad Piano did their tests in these two countries, because now maybe more westerners will actually learn to tell us apart.

it’s actually not a bad result, they managed to reach everyone possibly interested in just a month.

slovenia has 2M population, but the largest print daily newspaper had 200k circulation. so it’s safe to assume that only 0.5M people read newspapers, and 5000 customers online is exactly 1%. that’s the penetration you can always count on, regardless of what you’re doing.

I’ll bet that they will never get above that 🙂

Slovenia’s Big Pay ‘Wall’ Has Made €26,000

Piano Media, the online news payment system which first launched in Slovakia last year, says it made €26,000 in its first month in Slovenia this year. Users pay €4.90 per month for access to new paid parts of all nine participating sites from the country’s main publishers. So I calculate Piano has 5,306 paying customers in Slovenia.

via: paidcontent.org

Related articles

• Slo(www)Bus for Playful Exploration of Slovenia (prweb.com)
• Nine Slovenian Media To Start Charging For Some Online News (paidcontent.org)
• #paywalls12 – Looking outside: five paid-content lessons from Denmark, Slovakia and Slovenia (blogs.journalism.co.uk)