Stat breaks the code for premium content

Lucia Moses of Digiday writes about STAT, the health care news site launched by the Boston Globe that has successfully charged a high price — $299 a year — for its content.

Moses writes, “Boston Globe Media Partners’ Stat launched a $299-a-year membership program about six months ago. It wouldn’t release hard numbers, but says it’s on its way to hit its goal of 10,000 subscribers in three years. Even after putting some of its content behind a pay wall, it’s expanded its audience. Stat sights internal analytics showing a high of 2 million users in March (its comScore number is a much-lower 761,000 unique visitors in April, which is typical of a small publication).

“Boston Globe Media’s two earlier vertical launches haven’t gone as well. It closed Crux, focused on the Roman Catholic church, and ended BetaBoston as a standalone site.

“While its pricing and benefits are similar to 3-year-old tech news outlet The Information, Stat is more like the Beltway news outlet Politico in that it’s trying to serve both professionals working in and around health care as well as the general public. Stat publishes about 15 new articles a day on average. About 10 percent of that content is available to members only (labeled Stat+), with the first group in mind. In addition to individual subs, it’s begun selling group subs to places like universities, pharmaceutical companies and health care providers, which can come with a discount of up to 45 percent. This means that going forward, the subscriber numbers may grow faster than the revenue.”

Read more here.