Relaunching digital subscriptions

Situation

A digital media company ran three brands — a general news site, a commercial real estate publication and a real estate data product — and needed recurring revenue that didn't depend on advertising alone.

What I built

• Tiered digital subscriptions and paywall experiences across the portfolio.
• Unified analytics joining engagement, reader behavior and commercial yield data, used to decide where engineering time would earn the most.
• Content discovery and high-intent user journeys to grow the audience the subscriptions would convert from.
• Led a cross-functional organization of nearly 50 across product, design, engineering and revenue operations.

Result

• +77% ARR from the subscription relaunch.
• 3x audience growth across platforms.
• Programmatic revenue doubled in the first year.

Takeaway

Pricing changes work best when the data to judge them is already in place. Instrument first, then reprice.