Paywall Strategies 2012 preview: What have we learned about monetisation in a year?

At Paywall Strategies 2011, the first major conference from TheMediaBriefing, 12 months ago exactly, the assembled executives, MDs, founders and strategists were there to ask some searching questions about whether their titles should be charging for content.

Now as we prepare for this year's conference on Thursday, I look back at some of the key trends and milestones in the online content revenue story.

But first here's a recap of last year's event:

Last year, that persistant phrase - that "no one will pay for stuff online" - was still alive and kicking. In conversations I had with some delegates, it was clear that theie starting point was one of defence: figuring out how much to invest in paid-for digital products and how much to protect print or advertising income from free-to-air sites.

But now we're close to seeing every media business charge for something online, or at least put in place to steps to do so in future.

The Guardian, represented last year by Matt McAlister, is as optimistic about free content online as it's possible to be and is steadily growing online ad revenue, charging up to £55 CPM to advertisers as paidContent showed recently.

But even the free-focused Guardian is now a) charging for smartphone app access b) charging for iPad edition access and c) packaging up Guardian and Observer journalism into bite-sized ebooks designed for Kindles and other e-readers.

That's a good example of a coherent paid content strategy from an online publisher that still philosophically believes in free. It's not an either/or situation.

Over in genuine Paywall Land we've seen the ground shift significantly too.

It's safe to say that if News International thought The Times and Sunday Times would attract 120,000 paying readers 20 months on from its paywall going live, they would have gladly taken that. Some £1.2 million a month is going to The Times from iPhone and iPad customers - except it's not really: that figure doesn't factor in Apple's 30 percent cut and 20 percent VAT, meaning it's more like £600,000.

Yet, month-on-month growth every month since launch is good for any product and it's in stark contrast to sales of the paper. Also, The Times has gone from not know anything about its readers to knowing a great deal, including their credit card details, in under two years. Tom Whitwell from The Times will be at Paywalls on Thursday to talk more about this.

Over at the New York Times, revenue may be falling but digital subs are a bright spark: it had 324,000 subscribers as of 30 September, meaning it's catching up on the Wall Street Journal's 527,000 online subs.

The cheapest NYT digital sub package is $15 a month (£9.45) for just just NYtimes.com and smartphone access. Even if all subs were at that lower rate that's $4.86 million (before tax and Apple / Google / Amazon revenue share).

Perhaps the most important trend in the last 12 months - which all three publishers I mention above have positioned themselves well for - is the sheer proliferation of tablets and e-readers. The iPad and Kindle are becoming genuine, mainstream every day items - the Kindle Fire, with its touchscreen interface and low price, will be even more so.

Sales of ebooks via Amazon in the UK increased fivefold in Q4 last year; the Kindle was the best-selling item in 2011. Double the amount of people bought them last Christmas - some 1.33 million, or 1 in 40 adults - according to YouGov. 

At the same time, specialist hobby magazine publisher Future achieved the goal many have been seeking: falls in print revenue were by digital growth (longstanding media watchers may be familiar with the Rusbridger Cross).

This matters because portable devices are becoming the main source of content for so many people. That's true of B2B media too - if TheMediaBriefing's traffic logs are any guide, the iPad is now by far the biggest driver of views to this site after the desktop browsers.

Even Clay Shirky seemed to soften his opposition to Paywalls in light of moderate success of some.

But now, just as 12 months ago, the principle goal is to increase online revenue in sustainable and scalable ways and that's what we'll be talking about on Thursday.

Follow the coverage of the conference on TheMediaBriefing and on Twitter via the #Paywalls12 hashtag.