Peddling against the peak hour rush to digital, a German cycling website is in fact starting to print paper magazines.
Velobiz.de is a successful trade portal and features an online magazine packed with news. Editor Markus Fritsch felt that online was the most effective channel for news but he wanted to 'dig deeper' with more extensive reports and interviews; content best represented on paper.
'A paper magazine gives us more freedom about how we present our content to our readers. Big pictures work better on paper. And most of our users still like to read longer articles on paper rather than on a screen,' said Fritsch.
Velobiz will publish six magazines annually. The cost for the print subscription will be folded into the 70 euro ($92) annual fee for access to velobiz.de. The site has 3,300 subscribers—60 percent of which are retailers—who will be the primary reader base for the magazine. Velobiz.de will mail each issue to an additional 1,200 non-subscribing dealers.
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article. Our site today has 18,500 subscribers, and the magazine 7,500. Both publications are enjoying healthy growth. They serve similar but not exactly the same reader demographic. As far as we're concerned, print is alive and well.