From Bill Mitchell on Poynter, Oct. 19, 2011
For media executives awaiting reassuring evidence before experimenting with digital subscriptions, the time has arrived.
Simply put, their more adventurous colleagues at other companies have discovered multiple paths around the biggest risk attached to the pursuit of subscription revenue: diminished audience reach.
Here’s how they’ve navigating that tricky challenge:
- They’ve adjusted their paywall meters to permit whatever number of monthly free visits makes the most sense in their balance of reach and revenue. The trend, by the way, is definitely toward leaky walls rather than hard ones.
- They’ve recognized that, financially, their sites could afford to lose substantial traffic because their “sell-through” of online ads rarely approached their inventory anyway.
- They’ve made smart decisions, journalistically, about what content should remain outside the wall.