At the risk of dropping a bit of a bombshell, we are moving Mobile Marketing Magazine to a subscription-only model. With effect from 1 July, the site will be accessible via an annual subscription of £60.
It’s not a decision we’ve taken lightly, and we’re fully prepared for the sort of mass exodus that you get when you start asking people to pay for things you have previously given them for nothing, but our reasons for doing so are as follows:
In the almost four years since we launched Mobile Marketing Magazine, we have built up a loyal user base, which now amounts to 23,000 users per month. During this time, the site has been supported by a handful of advertisers, for whose support we remain extremely grateful. Not that they’ve been doing it for fun. Those advertisers who have used the site have mostly found that the investment has been fully justified by the leads it has generated for them. But there have simply not been enough companies willing to support the site through advertising to justify the work we put into it.
We don’t want to stop putting the work into the site. We believe we’ve created a pretty valuable and useful resource (or that’s what people tell us at least), and we want to go on making it better and better. Indeed, the money generated from subscriptions will, we hope, enable us to devote more time to the site, and take more of an in-depth look at some of the burning issues of the day.
So those companies that are prepared to may a modest fee will, going forward, be able to get their daily fix of mobile marketing news and views all in one place. Those that are not, we guess, will have to pull it together from other sources. As an incentive, we are offering a 2-years-for-the-price-of-1 deal for the first 50 subscriptions.
We’re not naïve: we would be surprised if our decision doesn’t wipe out a large part of our readership. Charging for a blog? What are they thinking of? But we've always said from day one that we're not a blog, but a trade magazine that just happens to be published online, and we hope that those who do stick with us will find the information, knowledge, and, dare we say, commercial advantage they get from the 1,000+ stories we post every year, more than justifies the annual fee, especially when seen against, say, the cost of a registration pass to attend a conference.
If you wish to continue reading Mobile Marketing Magazine after 30 June, just send us an email and we will reply with details of how to pay, via cheque or PayPal. As soon as payment is received, we will issue your login details. And remember, the first 50 subscribers will receive two years’ subscription for the price of one.
If this decision means this is the end of the road for you and us, then we hope that you have enjoyed our coverage of the mobile marketing scene over the past few years. But we sincerely hope you'll stick with us for more of the same going forward.

David Murphy
Editor