The "No-Paywall" Paywall Strategy

Hey Tyler, how's it going? Welcome to the Paywall Podcast.

Good, good, good. How are you?

I am, I am just dandy. Absolutely kind of blown away by this publication we're gonna talk to next, cuz they have no paywall, everything's free, but the reader is still paying. So how's that even possible for a nonprofit model of publisher?

Hmm. Interesting. Yeah. 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 LeakyPaywall. LeakyPaywall is the most flexible WordPress subscription platform. Find out more at leakypaywall.com. And now for today's episode.

So, and if you're listening to this, I just want to say we're— this, this publisher was asked to be incognito. So we're, uh, we're, we're going to not mention any names, but this is a publisher that, uh, Tyler, I know you've worked with for a little while now and we're going to, we're going to dive in because we're seeing a lot of success here and we're, we're, we're, we're seeing the use case of like registration wall philosophy and other things, but it's different. There's, there's, there's something different at work here. So, so let's get into it. Uh, the other thing I'm going to say is that this particular publisher we're talking about has about 60,000 visitors per month. And now I pull that number off of SimilarWeb, so you can kind of take that with a grain of salt. But anytime I look and quote numbers, I just quote what SimilarWeb says to try to stay consistent in terms of, in terms of traffic. So, yeah. All right. So Tyler, tell me a little bit. You, you started with this publisher a few months ago.

That's right. That's right.

And you've had early success with email list growth, with registrations. I mean, registrations and email list growth and revenue.

Yeah. So this is in a high-density location. So there's lots of, lots of people, lots of, lots of eyeballs, but they're in a very niche space in this high-density location. No, no physical paywall, no requirements anywhere to pay for content. The only thing they're doing at this point is they're offering the free registration after 3 free views. So you get 3, you get 3 free views off the street. You come to their site and on that 4th view, you're getting hit with a free registration, which in turn gives you unlimited access to their site. So you might be thinking, how on earth does that ever translate to revenue for them?

That's exactly what I was thinking. How, how does it translate to revenue?

Yeah. One, one would think, because we often done this podcast about kind of cranking down that, that, that meter to 1 free for, for those who come to your site and 1 free after they register. So giving away 2, 3 is very generous on, on the front end. And then unlimited on the backend is kind of crazy if you ask me, if you're trying to generate revenue, right? So, so what they're doing is after they register for free, there's a number of things that they can unlock as part of a paid option. So one thing that they're doing is on their site, if you want to participate in comments, you want to be part of the discussion on their site, you have to donate or upgrade to a membership plan. It's not required. You can still read all the comments.

That's right. Yeah.

So that's, that's sort of their key lever. And then also they're, they're, they're big into, they offer like merchandise, like a hat or like a, like a bag or some kind of branding.

Yeah.

If you sign up a welcome gift. Right. So, so that's the second thing. And then I think a third thing is they, they do have events in their, their area from time to time. So maybe twice per year or 3 times per year, they have I don't know what kind of event it is, but if you're a part of this community, you get special discounts, special access to those events. So there's a lot going on here in order to kind of break down what they're, what they're doing, but it, but it is working quite, quite well for them.

That's awesome. So I'm, what I'm sharing here is there is the pricing pages. You can't tell who it is, but it's, it's their pricing cards and So just to kind of review, so you can see that the comments, so you get to comment and then looks like, and you get, you get a, I don't know what you get, hat or pen or something. And then you also get, if you level up, you get, um, some event discounts, I think. Like if they do. Okay. Yeah.

So there's, you're kind of starting on like commenting privileges in the beginning. Like the lower, the lower tier, along with a members-only newsletter, opportunities to share feedback and all that, all that jazz and a, and a small welcome gift. I, I think it's a, a bag or something. Okay. And then you, you kind of level your way up to an ad-free experience, discounted tickets to their events that they have. I believe it's up to 3 times per year. I'm not entirely sure. So it, it's really more like a, a membership, you know, versus a, you know, transactional, you pay and you read the content kind of thing.

Let's talk a little bit about the comments because you mentioned that this was sort of a primary hook for readers. Are readers commenting on the site? Are, is there interaction there?

Oh, there is.

And how are they handling it?

Yeah, there's certainly people who are paying are indeed commenting on, on their, their site. As far as how they're moderating it, I think the payment itself does a pretty good job at moderating comments. And that seems to be the case across all the publishers that we work with. If you're requiring a payment in order to comment, that keeps it pretty clean typically. But I don't think they're doing, you know, they approve them and it's not, not a huge lift. Yeah.

Yeah. If you've given a credit card for payment, you're probably not going to be a total nightmare in the comments.

And the same kind of goes for the free registration. If you do have commenting available for free registration. It's like if they have their name and, you know, other, you know, attributes that personally identify who they are, you're a lot less likely to see nastiness break out on a, on a site. And publishers are always kind of nervous about turning on comments. And we always recommend to them that you should disable your comments on Facebook and then only allow the commenting to happen on your site, not on on the land of social media, which is a lot, generally a lot more friendly and easier to manage. And you get the eyeballs on your site and there's a lot of benefits to it that outweigh, I think, the negativity that can, you know, that can develop, but often doesn't.

That's a hot take and I love it.

Yeah.

So turn off, let me just still dive down that a little bit. So your Facebook page, turn off the comments, direct everybody to your page, and then set up at the very minimum, set up the registration wall. And if you do register, then yes, you can comment.

That's right.

But better yet, if you're brave enough, you turn on commenting for only paid, paid subscribers.

Yeah, for sure. Yeah. You'll certainly see a drop in like the number of people that comment with that, but, but for sure, like you should, you should be taking it, taking advantage of the eyeballs, the conversation, you know, you're the, you're the publisher and keep that comment world off of Facebook.

Hmm. I bet there's an AI solution for commenting these days. There's gotta be, right?

There's several that are out there. We've, I've yet to test any of them, but it's certainly something that exists and probably, you know, would be useful. But most of the publishers, like probably that are listening to this podcast, like unless you've got like millions and millions of page views every month, it's probably not going to be a huge lift to moderate the comments that come through.

So, okay. So that's very cool. Uh, yeah. Get the comments on the site off of social.

I like that. Okay.

So. Let's go. I'm going to share some, some numbers. So if you're— we'll, we'll talk through what's going on. But before we do that, I just wanted to back up and say something. So when I was doing the research on this particular publisher, realized that this is— this publisher is running a nonprofit model, but they're not officially a nonprofit. So they can, they can take money really any way they want.

That's true.

But they're, they're, they're still mission-oriented where it's like, hey, you know, support us and we're going to You know, we need your, your reader revenue. We need your payments in order to really thrive. They do have some advertising on the site and, and ad, and I noticed on the previous card that ad-free was another lever. So comments, event discounts, product discounts, free product, ad-free plan.

That's right.

So bunch of levers, a bunch of, a bunch of levers. And yeah, I like that.

I like that.

Okay. So here, if you're looking at this again, I've, I've blurred out and stripped out any identifying things on here, but, uh, essentially you're saying on the third article or fourth article, this wall shows up on the fourth article. So fourth article. So contrary to what we generally suggest, um, they've been running three free articles and then this registration wall comes up, but which says basically create a free account or log in to gain access to the story and then unlimited access afterwards. So that's essentially the pitch, and this works really well. And I think when we talked about this publisher a while back, you mentioned to me that this was kind of the starting point for the registration wall in order to get comfortable. And then maybe this wall would be tightened to 2 free articles or 1 free article down the road. Is that, you know, if that's still the plan?

That certainly is still the plan. Yeah. Okay.

All right. And one thing I will want to say that when it comes to putting up any kind of wall, whether it's a registration wall or if you're, if you're gonna turn on paid subscriptions for the first time, is a very terrifying experience for some of the publishers we work with. And I totally get it. You're going from free and open to all of a sudden this wall comes up and, and the fear is real. The nervousness is real. But what's happening here, I think, is a really great a really great example of a publisher that's saying, yeah, I need to start capturing email addresses and requiring that the emails come in to get to content, which is the superpower of the publisher. It's like, I have great content, here's the wall, you get past the wall, you get the content. It's a fair trade, right? But you don't have to start with zero or one article. You could start generously. So in this case, it's 3 free articles and then you register and then you get everything else. So really, a really generous setup. And then, so if you're, if you're thinking about doing this for the first time, I would suggest take this model, right? Set up the registration wall, go 5 free articles, don't do it for too long, but go to 5. The average, the average session, if you look at your Google or whatever analytics you're using, is about 1.7 article views per, per session that a visitor lands on your site. Which means that ideally you really want the registration wall to pop up on article number 2, because at 1.7 articles per session, you want most people to see this. And the ones that are going to engage with you will drop off the email. These are the people that you want on your list. So start generous and then you can tighten over time. Okay. I'll get off my soapbox for a little bit now. Sorry, I've been working on this study, 62-page study. That's pretty much done now. And wow, there's a lot of data in here. And this was, this was part of it. It's like building confidence is a whole section in the, in the study. Okay. So that's the registration wall. If you're not running one, this is your moment. Do it. Set one up. Then there's kind of a small level, which I noticed. I don't know if you have any, any intel on this, but essentially it's like below all the pricing cards, they have this like, oh, by the way, if you, like if you can't afford, you know, the sort of the regular pricing, you can, you know, get, get some benefits for just a small donation. Is there any take? Do you know if they're getting any takers on that? For sure.

There's been, there's been a measurable amount of people that have taken them up on that, on that offer who, you know, would have otherwise not have spent the $12 or whatever.

Okay.

Okay. Cool. Spent $5, $8, $9, you know? Yeah. Yeah. All right. Cool. Yeah.

I like it. I like it.

Yeah.

All right. And then before we get to the numbers, this was the, uh, this was the top of the card page, support local journalism. I just thought it was a nice layout. If you're watching this on YouTube, I know I've blurred out everything, but the idea is you have a nice simple title. You have a little bit of, you know, like information above the pricing cards and then, uh, then off you go. It's just a good clean. Layout.

Okay.

All right. Now you're looking at, now you're looking at this. If you're watching this on YouTube, you're looking at this thing. What the heck is Pete's marketing?

Looks like a redacted legal document.

Yeah, this is right. Exactly.

Okay.

So what are we looking at? So this publisher is sending out, uh, their newsletter in a format that I really, really, I've been thinking about. I really like it. It's, it's unusual and that's probably why I like it. Essentially, it's instead of like the regular newsletter where you get like a featured image and then the teaser and then the next featured image and then the teaser and the next featured image and then the teaser, this is like, no, no, no images. And the, instead of having like standard teasers, this is in the publisher's voice. So it's, it's written like, hey, so-and-so, today, this is what's happening here. And then there's the link to the article. And then this is really interesting that happened here for this reason. And then the link to the next article. And then, so it's written as like, like a, uh, just a, I don't know, 2, 3, 4 paragraphs, like a personal conversation from the editor. And then woven into the words are links to the articles. And that's it. Not one image in here.

Yep.

Yep. And I, my guess, you tell me, my guess is this works really, really well. It's personal. I love the fact it's personal. Yeah, it's very, very fast to scan. You can kind of read it quickly and it's friendly cuz it's in the voice of the, of the publication. And then the links are very obvious that pop out. So if you wanna read something, you just look at the link text and you click on it. And I bet this is pretty well received. I don't know if you have any intel on this.

Yeah, I don't have any data on it, but I also had the same kind of reaction from, from seeing their, their newsletter. It's, it's very compact. Concise and kind of straight to the point. And here's some links to various items and it's like no images really, nothing flashy. It's just, here's what's happening. And as you said, from the tone of the editor, so.

Yeah. And it's the, this is the bulk of the newsletter. It's just, it's these nice paragraphs. And then I think if I remember correctly, at the bottom of this email, there was a big button that said contribute or something like that. Or support us. Like, I can't, I don't remember what it, what it said.

Yep.

But there was a, there was a call to action, a CTA at the bottom that, that flagged, hey, you know, please, please support our mission.

Yep.

So, oh, I thought of one thing that we talked about, 5 levers. There's a 6th. I remember there's a, there's a subscriber-only newsletter that goes out as well.

That's right. Yeah.

I forgot to mention that. Yeah. So for a, for a donation-based Publication. We have, we have comments. We have, you get, you get a nice piece of gear, you get discounts on events, you get a subscriber-only newsletter and something else I forgot. There's a lot. My point is there's a lot you can do even when you're not walling up all your content. And you can still use a registration wall to really build your list.

Yeah. These are more membership-oriented benefits versus of a transactional, you pay, you get access to content. Like the content still has enormous value for them, for sure. It's how they're, how they're generating emails. That's why people are signing up. But they're using other, other elements to, to get people to actually put money in and become part of their community.

One other thing I saw, because I was going through this earlier, was that you— they welcomed questions to the editorial staff if you're a paid subscriber. So that's another benefit you get is you can, you can— and I love this sort of letters to the editor kind of thing. I'm starting to see this happen a little more and more. And I think it's something that publishers really need to lean into is having, having a dialogue with your readers.

Yeah.

And encouraging them to literally hit the reply button in the email. Like, don't, don't have a no-reply email. Have, you know, have this email go to a person. And when Google and email, you know, service providers see replies to emails, it signals engagement, it signals quality content. So, you know, Gmail will, you know, if there's a lot of engagement through replies, via email, then, then Gmail will be like, oh, well, we won't bury your newsletter. We'll, we'll put it up in your, in your mailbox because you're engaging with this source.

Yeah.

Okay. Last thing. Let's look at some numbers, shall we?

Boom.

Okay. So we only have a few months worth of data, but these numbers look really healthy. You have a, what I would say, 5.7% conversion rate. As far as the number of times that the registration wall has, has been seen. And that's, you know, when the study does come out, that's like square in the middle, like looking at, I think it's 2.7 to 6, 6.5% or 3.2 to 6.7%. It's right in the middle of that.

Yeah. And this is with a, with a very generous option here. So they're giving away a lot of free, free content before they're even asking people. So to be able to get to almost 6% is pretty remarkable.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So, well, clearly their content's in demand and I would argue if you do a good job with local news, you're gonna be in demand. People, you can have monopoly, uh, potential monopoly on your, uh, your area and and, uh, your, your neighbors, residents want this information. Yeah.

So, and I think they've done a really good job at sort of cultivating this like fan club around their publication. It's like people know them in the community. They've been around for, for quite a while. They're a digital only operation, but they have events, they engage with the community. And so all of those elements, I think, help kind of drive that conversion rate that we're seeing despite having, you know, 3 free views before even, you know, prompting someone to sign up for free.

Right. Yeah, this is pretty great. I mean, we're, I'm looking at April 1st here or some, sometime in early April where things started rolling and that's, uh, you know, April, May, June, maybe 3 months. Yeah. 2,200 free registered readers came in in that timeframe.

Yeah. That's far beyond anything that they had seen prior using a widget on the side of their site for email collection, as you can imagine, as we know, as we've seen, you know, dozens, hundreds of times at this point.

So, yeah. I'd say that, I'd say that the, you know, the number one thing that a publisher, that you as a publisher can do today, I mean, the one thing is to set up a registration wall and finally, just don't, don't, don't ask people to join your newsletter, require it. Yeah, with the registration wall, you're drawing a line in the sand. You're saying, hey, you want access to my content? I need your email. Like, it's required and it's a fair trade and you can be as generous as you want, just like these guys, right? 3 free articles to start. Then you, then you, then you get the wall so you can start very generously. And then as you gain confidence, tighten and tighten and tighten. And at some point, I know that this publisher will be at 1 free article and then this conversion rate's gonna be higher.

Yeah. It might even be double based on what we're seeing.

Way higher. Yeah. Yeah. So it's amazing what a registration wall can do. And, you know, we work closely with a lot of publishers and we get them to turn on the registration walls and it changes the game for them completely. Right. All of a sudden, You know, traffic, they're doubling their traffic in a year. Their paid subscriptions are growing faster than they ever, like by a chunk, a big chunk faster than maybe double or more because they're, they're good. They're building their list of engaged readers, sending that traffic back. It's becomes the flywheel. We call this the publisher flywheel. It works, but it's, it's seems to be something that publishers really need to take their time on to think on, because it is a big change when you're requiring, you know, an email trade for content. Yeah.

I don't, I don't know how many publishers we've worked with, you know, who come on board knowing that they're putting up this paywall system, subscription system. We get to the end of the process and it's like, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa. I, I didn't really wanna put a, put up a paywall. Right. So yeah, these things, these things take time. And as you said, kind of using the levers available to you to gain confidence that this will work and does work. Yep.

Yep, exactly. All right, Tyler, this was great.

Yep.

Awesome. Thanks for sharing. Appreciate it very much. And, uh, yeah, if you have any, if you have any questions, uh, on what we're talking about here, just, uh, email us, uh, reach out to us. Uh, info@leaky-paywall.com will do the trick. Or you can hit Tyler up at Paywall Project. And we're always, always happy to chat. So till next time.

Thanks for listening to the Paywall Podcast. If you'd like to get in touch to discuss subscription strategy, go to leakypaywall.com. See you next time.