Pete Ericson examines whether publishers should offer an ad-free subscription tier. Samnet in Stockholm charges 69 kroner for ads and 99 kroner ad-free, with 11% of subscribers upgrading. Ericson argues ad-free plans boost revenue cheaply since 40% of visitors use ad blockers and over 90% of new subscribers pick monthly plans.
Questions this episode answers
Episode 24.
Basic: 69 kroner per month; Ad-free: 99 kroner per month.
Approximately 11%.
40% or more.
Likely less than 1%.
Welcome to the Paywall Podcast, where we discuss paywalls and paywall strategies for news and magazine publishers. This episode of the Paywall Podcast is brought to you by Leaky Paywall. Leaky Paywall is the most flexible WordPress subscription platform. Find out more@leakypaywall.com where you can download Leaky Paywall for free. And now for today's episode.
Hi, I'm Pete from Leaky Paywall, and welcome to episode number 24 of the Paywall Podcast. And today I want to address the question of should I offer a subscription level that hides ads? Now, I just got out of a meeting with Somnit, which is a news publisher based in Stockholm, Sweden, and they've had some success with offering a paid subscription level that hides all the ads on their website. And this question or this debate has been going on for years with some proponents and some arguments against. The problem that most publishers suggest is that their best readers, which are paid subscribers, should see the ads. And while yes, emotionally that makes sense, there is an ad blocker war happening and 40% or more of website visitors come to your website with ad blockers engaged, which means that almost half of your readers don't want to see ads anyway, so you're kind of fighting your own readership. That being said, most of the readers on your website are casual users. If you look at your readership, your paid readership as a percentage of your total readership, it's likely less than 1%, which means less than 1% of the readers on your website are paid subscribers, most are casual visitors, and most then will see your ads. So yes, hiding ads to paid subscribers won't really affect your ad rates. Okay, so let's take a look at how Sam Knit has done it and what the results were. If I go down to this article, that's first Schlog, we have a prompt to subscribe. This is translated now in English to Proposals for More power. And what you see here is a really nice, simple choice. Right in the subscription nag. Here they you can purchase the Share plus subscription, which is the basic subscription, for 69 kroner per year. I'm sorry, per month. 69 kroner per month. Or you can purchase the Share plus ad free version for 99 kroner per month. Now, if you do the math, you notice that the ad free version is over 40% more expensive than the basic version, which sounds like an awful lot. But guess what? They have an 11% take rate on the ad free version. In other words, over 10% of their paid subscribers decide to pay 40% more simply to not see ads, and they've been doing this for over a year. So think about what you're doing with your own subscriptions and consider this as a way to essentially earn more revenue for your subscriptions without having to do anything. You don't have to produce more content. You're not going to suffer with ad displays. It's almost free money, very easy to set up with leaky paywall, you can use the Ad Dropper add on in order to hide ads from paying subscribers. Or in WordPress you can simply target the user subscriber role and hide ads for that. Either way, it'll work and it will give you a brand new bump in revenues. Now one additional mention here is While we were having our discussions, we took a look at the percentage of readers that choose a monthly recurring plan versus a six month plan versus a twelve month fixed plan. And if you're a news publisher, consider simplifying your offerings to just a monthly recurring plan. Over 90% of subscribers that come in and pay choose the monthly recurring and one of the big challenges in converting paid subscribers is not confusing that casual reader with offers. If you offer somebody five choices, ten choices, their chances of actually purchasing go down substantially. So in this case, if you're a news publisher, take a look at offering just two choices. Recurring monthly regular recurring monthly ad free and keep it at that. And do what Samnet did. Bump up your subscription revenues without having to do much. Hope that helps. See you next time.
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