There is an awful lot going on at The Intercooler right now, so I thought it would be timely to bring you up to speed with where things are at present.
And I guess the first thing to mention is that we’re going to be putting up the subscription price next month. Thereafter we’re going to charge £5.99 per month and £59.99 per year for those who subscribe through the website, and £6.49 per month and £64.99 per year for those who subscribe through the app. It’s worth mentioning now that whichever way you choose to subscribe, you will continue to have full access to both website and app.
Why are we doing it? Well, you’ll have noticed that nothing is getting cheaper at the moment and our prices have stayed the same since we launched the app almost two years ago. This despite the fact we have since built and launched a brand new website, and invested heavily in other areas of the business, including making video, retaining additional support staff and signing new contributors. As for the difference in pricing between platforms, if you subscribe through the website the vast majority of every penny of what you pay comes direct to us, but if you don’t then a significant proportion goes to the app store providers. It’s worth re-stating too that we have never carried any conventional advertising, nor do we intend to.
In other news, we’re delighted to say that more people are discovering us every day, resulting in subscriptions to Ti rising a third in the last six months alone, which stands in rather stark contrast to the downward spiralling trend seen in the publishing industry as a whole. That’s despite us having made no attempt to go out and ‘buy’ an audience by giving away or massively discounting subscriptions as so many others have had to do, especially those largely funded through advertising. True, we could temporarily inflate the numbers that way, but we want people to subscribe to Ti because they think we’re good not simply because they think we’re cheap, and it is vital to us to have engaged, long-term relationships with our subscribers. With over 90 per cent of our readers choosing to re-subscribe it suggests that, overwhelmingly, this is working and that it is the right way to go.
In other areas of the business, the podcast is still proving perennially popular. It was inevitable that others with far deeper pockets capable of taking out whole page advertisements in magazines would come after us, and they have, so it is gratifying to see our episodes still reaching the top three of all UK automotive podcasts every week and the top 10 among all UK leisure podcasts. We don’t have posh recording studios, script editors or any kind of marketing budget, but we do love cars and know a bit about what we’re discussing – most of the time at least – and it’s great to see that still counts among people with plenty of choice but not much time.
We’re proud too that we’re adding to the list of partners with whom we work. We’ve said it before but it bears repeating that we don’t partner with organisations just because they are, say, a big name, or have a big audience, or are prepared to give us money. Partners have to be likeminded, they have to share our values and we have to get on with them, because life is too short not to. So in addition to our long-standing and ongoing relationships with Bonhams, the British Automobile Racing Club, Footman James, JBR Capital and Motorsport UK we are delighted that we have recently been joined by Bicester Heritage and Supercar Driver. We are constantly in talks with new prospects and hope to be announcing some additional relationships shortly.
In the meantime we will continue to work flat out to make what you pay for even better value, even if you will soon have to pay a little more. On the editorial side we’re doing more shoots of key cars, will be making more videos and improving further still the already world-beating roster of journalists, engineers, designers and drivers who provide our content. We hope the recent recruitment of Steve Sutcliffe proves that intent.
And we have an event coming up, details of which we won’t be keeping secret much longer. Suffice to say for now it will be a small gathering somewhere central – not a race track – with some brilliant guests, our first live podcast recording and, we hope, a great deal of time to chat to you. And of course first dibs at tickets will be reserved for you, our forthright, funny, intelligent, passionate, wonderfully engaged and doubtless unfeasibly attractive band of loyal subscribers. We look forward to sharing details with you soon.
