The Herald has announced a year-on-year increase of 2.4% in paid-for readership in the year to June 2014.

Bucking the national trend, there has been a net increase in paying readership across The Herald's print and digital platforms, attributed to the success of both 'digital only' and 'combination digital and print' subscription packages.

Online paid subscriptions also passed the 10,000 mark for the first time in June 2014.

Heraldscotland.com saw the number of total unique monthly visitors jump 50% to nearly two million from a year earlier.

The Herald & Times Group was the first regional media company in the UK to introduce digital subscriptions, in December 2011. The trend towards online consumption for The Herald is now growing faster than ever, with more than 125% growth in online subscriptions in the year to June 2014, with the rate of increase growing in the last quarter.

At eveningtimes.co.uk, which does not currently have registration or subscription, visitor numbers jumped by 80% to over 700,000.

Herald & Times Group managing director Tim Blott said: "Our decision to charge for digital content proves that readers are still very much willing to pay for quality journalism and our digital products continue to go from strength to strength in terms of paying readership, audience and advertising revenue growth. These paid-for readership figures speak for themselves and from this we see nothing but opportunity.

"I could never have hoped to sell two million copies of our print versions but digitally, if we continue to deliver quality journalism to a worldwide audience, the potential reach and influence of heraldscotland.com is greater than ever before."