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The local publishing industry worldwide has been under the microscope for the better part of two decades, with the generally held consensus being that it’s experiencing a crisis. Thousands of smaller publishers have already shuttered their doors owing to an inability to grow and monetize their audiences.
And yet, while the segment is struggling under profound challenges — such as tech giants’ rising competition for audience mindshare and an ever-growing distrust of the news media in general — that’s not to say local publishing is doomed.
Local Publisher Strategies in Australia is State of Digital Publishing’s (SODP) inaugural study of independent, locally focused publishers in Australia.
This report examines the strategies used by small-scale publishers to grow their businesses.
The report aims to provide digital publishers with insights on content strategies they can incorporate into their operations to move up a level.
The publishers covered by this report are independently owned and locally focused. Their readership ranges from <5,000 and >50,000 monthly visitors, with sites organized into four brackets based on their estimated monthly traffic.
Read on for key findings.
| Monthly Traffic Range | Recommendations to Move Up to the Next Bracket |
|---|---|
| <5,000 |
|
| 5,001-25,000 |
|
| 25,001-50,000 |
|
| >50,000 |
|
To compile this report, a mixture of third-party tools was used to collect data on the estimated total and organic traffic of the publishers covered in this study.
While this approach is less accurate than using first-party audience data, not all publishers disclose their first-party data.
64 publishers were analyzed for the purpose of this qualitative study.
The selection criteria required that publishers be:
Independently owned
This meant excluding locally focused publications owned and operated by a national holding company. The knowledge, opportunities and challenges an independent publisher faces are markedly different from those of a national holding company.
Locally focused
The report excludes publishers specializing in geographically agnostic niches, like fashion or adventures. Publishers that cater to a geographically constrained audience will have different strategies and objectives.
These two parameters filtered out the overwhelming majority of Australia’s small publishers.
Australia was picked for the inaugural study owing to its similarities with the US and UK markets. While Australia may only have a population of 25 million, the country shares social, political, technological, media, cultural and economic similarities with these more significant markets. This means lessons learned here are analogous with other overseas markets.
The raw data for the report can be found here. You can learn about future reports here.
This report is brought to you by State of Digital Publishing.
State of Digital Publishing (SODP) is a startup market research publisher, producing a publication and community for digital media publishing professionals, content and media owners, in new media and publishing technology.
SODP’s mission is to discover and foster sustainable digital media publishing models.SODP publishes news, educational content and research, and provides consulting that help digital media publishers and editorial marketing professionals develop their skills, advance their careers, gain better insights and achieve audience development results.
Andrew Kemp
Research Lead & Managing Editor
Vahe Arabian
Contributor
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