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Subcribe to comment rss feedHow are we doing after ten years?
Tim Parkin
Amateur Photographer who plays with big cameras and film when in between digital photographs.
Last month we set up a survey to find out a little bit more about our subscribers and also what they think about current and potential future content. We were blown away with the number of responses and we promised to give you an update on the results. The following post shows the results and some conclusions we can draw from them.
Q1 How long have you been a photographer
Looks like the vast majority are over 15 years - we’re an experienced bunch in general!
Q2 Country of Origin
More than half of the respondents were from the United Kingdom, out of the remainder, 1 in 6 were from the US, 1 in 6 from the rest of Europe and 1 in 20 from Australia with a smattering of respondents from other countries. Here’s the top results
Q3 How long have you been a subscriber to On Landscape
It looks like most of your were early adopters so a big thanks for sticking with us! We’re still gaining subscribers and there’s a natural churn where people leave for a while but many who have left have since returned.
Q4 My photography is mostly outdoors/landscape
Well, this is a bit of a ”well.. duh!!” question but we thought it worth asking if there were a significant number of your for whom landscape isn’t your primary choice. I think we’ve confirmed expectations though.
Q5 I don’t care about the technical side of photography
This one is a bit of a curveball as personally I figured people would still care about technical matters, even if they fall strongly on the ‘artistic’ side of photography. After all the technical stuff is the craft of our passion. It turns out that this is true, very few of our readers strongly agreed with the premise with the vast majority either disagreeing or not expressing an opinion either way. Intelligent analysis of the technical side of photography is still on the menu.
Q6 What other websites/magazines do you read?
We had a selection of answers, here’s a sampling of the more common ones.
- RPS Journal
- The Online Photographer
- PhotoPXL
- Outdoor Photography
- Lenswork
- FujiLove
- Minimalism
- Black and White Photography
- Petapixel
- Better Photography
- Amateur Photographer
- Outdoor Photographer
- DigiLloyd
- Brooks Jensen
- Aperture
- BJP
- Lenscratch
- byThom
Q7 How many On Landscape articles do you read per issue
Looks like most of you read most of them. We always planned on having a broad range of articles where readers might pick and choose what they want to read, hence why we publish such a range of content. The logic follows on a metaphor we use from music magazines where a reader may only read about the bands or music style that matches their own tastes.
Q8 Let us know what you think of the current or new types of content
We wanted to know what sort of articles you liked or might want to see more of in the future (and conversely, what you could do without). Not too many surprises but we’ll see some more book reviews, critiquing, composition, printing and post-processing in the future.
Q9 Where should we focus our efforts to improve the content of the magazine?
This was really interesting as we received many excellent comments. What we gathered from this is that you’d like to see a but more geographical distribution of photographers (we’re working on that); you’d like to see some more quality, concise videos (more about that later). Generally, it seems you want to keep the concentration on the creative side of photography and bring more content around composition, working in the field etc.
Q10 How do you read On Landscape content?
Looks like most of you prefer to use the PDF, which isn’t completely surprising, although a significant number still like to read the articles as they come out online.
Q11 What device do you use to read the magazine?
Most of you still use your laptop, desktop or tablet to read the magazine with about an even split between computers and tablets.
Q12 Do you enjoy the video content we produce?
A fairly strong response in support of video content I think.
Q13 Do you enjoy the audio content we produce?
A general yes but not as strong as support for video content
Q14 We’re looking to create some more video content, what would you like to see
The main theme of the responses was to create more on location footage but also to carry on producing our screencasts and webinars.
Q15 Let us know what we could do to improve the website
It seems that there is general satisfaction with the themes raised. The mobile theme could do with some improvement it seems and the search could be improved, both of which we have done some work towards and have plans to work on in the near future.
Q16 What should we concentrate our efforts on to improve the website?
A good range of responses and it’s raised a couple of bugs (login isn’t remembered being the main one but also bugs with the search functionality which we’ve now removed temporarily as the plugin we were using was broken). Thanks for all of the detailed feedback here!
Q17 What was it about On Landscape that convinced you to subscribe?
I think a summary of what was said here is that we have sincerity, quality and a range of content that is difficult to find elsewhere and the content tends toward the analysis of the art, philosophy and creativity rather than the technical.
Q18 What do we need to avoid to stop you unsubscribing?
In summary, don’t get too technical/gear oriented, don’t recycle cliche memes, don’t go “tips and top 5’s”, don’t take loads of advertising, don’t naval gaze too much, don’t sacrifice written content for video and don’t put the price up!
A huge thank you for the hundreds of you that took the time to complete the long survey and so many of you who wrote detailed text answers to the open questions. We'll keep trying to improve things without breaking the current general approach to the magazine. And you can let us know how we did in another five years!