Ad support as a complete business model for consumer mags

Since last week we talked about the viability of sponsorship as a sustainable business model for PLoS, I thought it would be interesting this week to look for a few consumer magazines that depend basically entirely on advertising, eschewing subscriptions altogether. I have to say that this was much harder than I'd thought.

Obviously, it's much easier for an online periodical than a print periodical to go totally over to advertising, asking for nothing from readers, but even the e-zines I looked at had small exceptions to the advertising-only rule. The Onion is an almost completely free publication that has had notable success both in print and digitally. Still, The Onion also makes some revenues from merchandise, though I can't imagine it's much; and people who live outside the free distribution range have to subscribe. Wired is a technology mag that sells the print version, but has completely free online content. It both recycles some features from the print mag and adds new stuff. The New Yorker has the same business model: it has completely free online access, which includes some but not all the print features, plus extras. Salon is an online-only magazine, without a print component. It upsells users, offering a huge amount of stuff for free (with the option, every now and then, to watch or to skip an advertisement), but it also suggests that you subscribe to Salon Premium.

Tangentially, here's an article (from last year) on how magazines are doing utilizing Web 2.0 constructively. It's kind of what you'd expect, but it's a nice summary.