EUobserver's Alejandro Tauber opens up on challenges with subscription growth, the buyout that fixed it, and what it taught him about revenue
When Alejandro Tauber took over as editor-in-chief of EUobserver in 2022, he thought subscription growth would be straightforward.
"We're a renowned platform," he remembers thinking. "We need only a couple thousand subscribers... among 27 EU member states, that's only a couple hundred per member state. Easy peasy."
It wasn't. And the story of how EUobserver went from that naive optimism to a successful buyout by Slovakian media group Dennik N this year is a remarkable one.
EUobserver's traffic went up by more than 50 per cent since March, from around 400,000 unique visitors to more than 600,000, and so did the subscription revenue. It's a useful case study for any publisher struggling with reader revenue: strong journalism, growing subscribers, and still not enough money to grow.
EUobserver's core editorial team is small - around seven journalists covering everything from foreign affairs to trade, alongside a handful of interns.
"We can only publish a certain number of articles, and then at a certain point you just run into this wall," Tauber explains.
"If you do not publish more, you cannot get more traffic. You cannot fill the funnel more, because attribution is limited."
