From 0 to 100,000 users in 4 months.This is Blendle, the iTunes of journalism.

Blendle launched in April this year, and has since gathered 100.000 users in The Netherlands. A major milestone for our startup from Amsterdam.

Our service offers all newspapers and magazines in the Netherlands on one website, and tries to reinvent the business model of journalism by making it incredibly easy to pay for separate articles. Users get €2,50 when they sign up and pay between €0,10 and €0,80 per article. When users click on an article, they automatically pay. And when they dislike what they read, they can instantly refund the article price.

Within Blendle, users can see what articles their friends or interesting curators (celebrities, journalists, politicians, radio DJ’s) have shared from the paid sections of today’s newspapers and magazines, and which articles are trending on the platform. The site also enables anyone to share articles from Holland’s best journalists on Facebook and Twitter. No more signing up with different paywalls for every newspaper.

A steady 20% of users convert to paying users, which is a high percentage compared to other freemium services.

Currently more than half of the users is under 40 years old, a group that traditionally does not pay for newspapers and magazines. This is one of the reasons why Blendle doesn’t cannibalize on existing subscriptions, which was very important to publishers in the Netherlands.

At Blendle, we believe that young people will start paying for journalism again if you make it as easy as possible. Paying for quality journalism should be as easy as buying an app in the App Store.

And with today’s milestone of 100.000 users in a country of 16 million, we are starting to believe our model is working.

Blendle is currently only available in the Netherlands.