Salon Media Group‘s Q2 revenues decreased, on account of lower online ad revenues, though its losses shrunk.
Total revenues for Q2 were $1.6 million, a decrease of 6% from $1.7 million a year ago, with ad revenues decreasing to $0.9 million from $1.0 million a year ago. The decline in ad revenues is attributed to “the departure of the VP of Advertising Sales for an extended medical leave, and the corresponding short-term reduction in staff to sell advertising on the Salon website”, the company said.
It had a net loss of $0.1 million, compared to $1.2 million in the year-ago quarter.
It seems Salon.com is moving away from subscriptions: Salon has experienced a drop in overall membership, which has declined from approximately 84,500 at March 31, 2005 to approximately 80,600 at June 30, 2005, “primarily a result of greater emphasis being placed on serving advertising units, rather than marketing the Premium membership service.”
Update: Patrick Hurley, the former senior VP of
business operations at Salon, and now works at Airena, Inc., send us his analysis of the changing landscape in which Salon.com is operating these days:
“I think some larger trends may make it increasingly
difficult for Salon (and other smaller web content
subscription sites) to attain the subscription growth
rates and revenues achieved in the past. At least not
without radically retooling the offering.
– Newsreaders: I think newsreaders have significantly
altered the reader / publisher equation. With
newreaders, you create a daily mixtape of articles
culled from a long list of sites rather than
habitually visit a handful of sites. That mindset
wouldn’t seem to engender the same kind of daily loyal
readership that’s ripe for conversion to a paying
subscriber.
– Blogs: Four or five years ago, there weren’t a lot of
alternatives to Salon when you wanted to read high
quality content with an intelligent, wry, irreverent
sensibility. Now there are scads. Instapundit,
Wonkette, Huffington Post, et al. And they are all
free and building loyal readerships of their own.
– Political Fatigue: The lead up to the 2004
presidential election was really a fertile time for
Salon Premium and we accentuated Salon’s liberal bent
in driving subscriptions(including partnering with
MoveOn.org and ACT). I think the re-election of George
Bush really sapped the spirit of some Salon
subscribers though. Driving Premium subscriptions was
all about tapping into readers’ political passion but
that’s difficult to do when people want to tune out of
politics for a while. I’m sure the liberal advocacy
groups are wrestling with the same issue.”
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