Pagemasters

Times News Group online puzzles

Times News Group and Pagemasters teamed up with Spotpass to create a micro-donation model on a new digital puzzles website.

Project background

Times News Group (TNG) provides rich local news content to regional Victoria. From Bendigo to Ballarat and along the Surf Coast beyond Geelong, they currently have seven titles to their name. Accompanied by a strong online and social media presence, there was one thing missing from their service – digital puzzles. Enter Pagemasters.

Our service

Already familiar with Pagemasters, after using our print services in March 2021, TNG Managing Director Warick Brown reached out to see what we could provide in the way of digital puzzles, with the goal of adding reader engagement to their new mega-site.

Keen to push the scope of our service further, Pagemasters integrated a new library of puzzle types, expanding our offerings to encompass:

  • Quick Crosswords
  • Cryptic Crosswords
  • Mini Crosswords
  • Easy Sudoku
  • Hard Sudoku
  • Wordfinds


Monetising Digital Puzzles

After establishing the content, the next step was deciding how the service would be monetised.

TNG looked for alternative ways to increase their reader base and generate revenue without a subscription model. Enter Spotpass.

TNG chose to use the Spotpass micro-payment platform, to allow players to access puzzles in a fast, frictionless way all for a low price.

As a result, Pagemasters puzzles content was able to be supplied on a flexible basis to make the micro-payment model easy to roll out.

The Kick-Off

A pre-summer date was selected as a soft launch, with readers able to enrich their time off with some challenging brain games, while providing engagement during a generally slower news cycle. This exciting offer is now being brought to market, where users determine the amount they spend each week and are not goverened by subscriptions or minimum spend paywalls. 

Client feedback

“Launching our new puzzles mega-site with Pagemasters and Spotpass makes the entire process of playing premium puzzles fast, affordable and most of all fun for everyone!”

Warick Brown
Managing Director
Times News Group

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