Consumer Reports Surpasses 3,000,000 Online Subscriptions

Success of pay-for-play model bucks trend.

By Dylan Stableford
12/03/2007

Yonkers, New York-based Consumer Reports magazine today announced that ConsumerReports.org has reached 3-million paid subscribers, a milestone for the company and, the publishers say, for the Web at large.

The print version of Consumer Reports has increased its circulation by 400,000 to 4.3 million over the last three years, including a healthy bump in newsstand sales (160,000 newsstand copies per month, up from 107,000 copies in 2004). But it's the Web site that is enjoying the most success.

ConsumerReports.org launched as a paid site in 1997 with 300,000 subscribers. This, the company is quick to point out, at a time when other large publishers, including the Wall Street Journal, are considering dropping their pay-for-play model on the Web or, in the case of the New York Times, abandoning it altogether.

"We have managed to fight the tide and expand paid readership in a way previously unknown on the Web," said John Sateja, senior vice president for information products.