How To Choose Right Paywall for Your Newspaper

Digital newspapers and magazines often use paid subscriptions and paywalls to monetize their websites. It means that the access to high quality and exclusive articles is restricted until a reader pays for it.

What kind of paywalls are there?1. Hard paywalls

It doesn’t allow visitors to read articles at all or allows to see one or two of them before showing a paywall window. This window usually claims they need to pay for further work with the website. This paywall type can be both effective and risky, as 90% of your audience can leave the resource without any actions. Niche resources are usually leaders of utilizing paywalls, as readers are in vital need to get their articles.

Best practices:

The Times

They were first to launch a hard paywall and lost 90% of users in 2010. However, 10% of visitors left and generated even more revenue for the newspaper. In 2016, they announced that they had more than 400K subscribers both for digital and printed news.

Financial Times

You see a paywall window at the very beginning when you enter the website. Their CEO John Ridding claims that they practically don’t use paid advertising, so paywall brings the newspaper the major revenue.

2. Metered paywalls

Such paywalls let users see a number or articles (usually it is five or ten articles) prior to the moment when a paywall appears. This is a great way of personalizing user experience and showing readers what is content of the website like, whether it can be useful for them.

Best practices:

The New York Times

This newspaper provides visitors with 10 free articles per month. Not so long ago, their number was around 20, however, the number of subscribers grew rapidly, so it was reduced. As their COO Meredith Kopit Levien states, "the high-quality journalism is something to be paid for".

Anyway, giving readers an opportunity to see what they will pay for is an ideal option.

3. Freemium paywalls

It is when users can read articles while seeing ads while not having access to premium content that is hidden behind a paywall.

Best practices:

The Guardian

This newspaper uses a three-tier model including a freemium paywall. Plenty of ads are what visitors have to put up with, if they want to read high quality and compelling articles. Paying for the daily subscription allows to get rid of ads and enjoy reading. Other subscription packages offer various bonuses to - whether they are ebooks or exclusive tickets to actual events.

Do paywalls work?

This monetization model offers benefits both for editorial teams and newspapers subscribers.

While loyal readers receive the access to high quality, valuable and relevant content without seeing tons of ads, publishers work just with their target audience that brings more revenue than unspecified visitors do.

The main drawback of the paywall monetization model is that you need to look for your target audience and think about the way to turn these visitors into loyal customers. However, it can be fruitful and lucrative once you have gathered loyal subscribers around your media resource.

A Content Lead at IO Technologies