We are often asked if Newsstand is somehow competitive to PressPad. It is in fact complementary, but it is not obvious so we decided to write down everything “Newsstand” really is:
- Newsstand as a special folder on iOS devices where all newsspapers and magazines are stored. Easy.
- Now to more complicated stuff: magazines utilizing Newsstand has to have subscriptions.
That means that user can choose from several different periods in whitch new issues will be delivered to their devices automatically. Available subscription periods are: 1 week, 1 month, 2 months, 3 months, 6 months and one year.
You can offer one or many subscriptions and for each of them offer different price point. - Prices for subscriptions are choosen from Apple Price Matrix (App Store Pricing Matrix).
Note on prices: Apple has added two new TIERs for Euro countries. They are called 1b and 2b and are slighlty cheaper than TIER 1 and 2. - You can offer free subscription as well. Next point explains why you should do that.
- When somone opt-in for a free or paid subscription, they will get next issue delivered automatically to their devices. This is huge for publishers who care about reader base. When new issue is downloaded user will be notified via Push Notification on their screen and can immediately start reading.
- You can choose between non-renewing and auto-renewing subscriptions. This means that when 1 year subscription ends new one will start automatically. User off course can cancel automatic renewing.
- Even when using subscriptions you can still offer price for single issues. This gives your readers a choise and flexibility.
- Cool feature made available to publishers by Apple is customer opt-in information. Every time your Newsstand app is launched for the first time a user is asked if he or she would like to provide publisher with their name, surname, emai and postal code. This allows for better marketing for your publications and contacting your users about extra promotions. (Note: in PressPad we’re curently working on legal and technical way to provide you with this information in an easy and fast way.)
You still need a software to run your magazine on users’ devices, to talk with Apple servers and host your content. Newsstand is very useful option for publishers and we encourage our clients to choose this option.
We are talking with one of our publishers who recently switched to Newsstand to allow us to publish his results before and after. We will post updates on that soon.