Metered Paywalls : Target your most loyal user base without using AI/ML

What’s your paywall strategy? That’s a tough question, especially if a news media organization is just starting to build a subscription business or looking at revenue diversification from readers or users.

The paywalling strategy for many news media companies has evolved over the past decade. From starting to choosing just a couple of pieces of content to put behind a paywall, to metering their websites (to offer several free reads before a paywall pops up), to letting artificial intelligence segment users show a paywall — the journey has been long, tiring, and full of experiments.

This article will look at different paywalling strategies that will help you choose the best one for your website and app. A publisher might want to mix and match two or more paywalling options to build their strategy — depending on the content type, sections of the website or app, or different user segments (ranging from fleeting users to loyalists).

Should you feel like getting expert advice on deciding the paywall strategy for your media business, please feel free to reach out to us at ConsCent.ai

Hard Paywalls : Convert your engaged users faster

Publications like Digiday, Bloomberg, The New York Times, and The Indian Express use metered paywalls to drive user engagement. Metered paywalls are to limit access to premium content until after the reader has reached a specific limit per month or week basis. This can be done to acquire user interest in your premium content and then ask them to pay or register for content access.

Subject to experimentation based on data and analytics that capture user interest and engagement, metered paywalls gained popularity amongst news publishers and other content subscription platforms. Eg, Medium.com

Some possible combinations for metered paywalls:

Newsletter >Premium Content >Limit Exhaust > Subscription PaywallSearch >Premium Content > Limit Exhaust >Micro-Paywall | Registration Wall

Freemium Model: The art of not losing users in the initial days

The freemium model allows publishers to gate some stories behind a hard paywall while keeping most of the content free to consume. In the build-up phase of the subscription lifecycle, this allows publishers to minimize drop-in platform engagement and digital ad revenue while giving enough opportunity to the publisher to showcase premium content to a larger number of users. However, in this model, the publisher has to ensure that premium content is exposed to a decent number of users on the platform.

Let’s take the example of Indiatoday.in, it has premium content tabs on its homepage (Pg.1), but the rest of the content is free. Premium content is behind a hard paywall that is subject to subscriptions on both a monthly and a yearly basis.

Data Walls: The more user information, the better

This simple concept allows publishers to collect user data in exchange for access to specific segments of the website. In a current situation, where we are heading into a cookiepocolypse, data walls come in handy to gather first-party data and other valuable details across multiple touchpoints on your content platform. Further, the user data can strengthen engagement with relatively newer user segments.

Besides, registered users also become the platform’s most loyal users and can be used to build a strong subscription funnel.

Followed up by newsletters, surveys, or brand-building activities, and even extending special offers, data walls are a great way to precede the subscription buying process.

Micropayment: A first hook to gather paying intent

Indian publications such as Outlook India and  India Today use micro-paywalls as a great way to convert fleeting users into payers. In fact, Outlook India noticed an 8X growth in its paying user base when it implemented a micro-paywall on the magazine stories section of its website in 2021.

Despite popular belief that micropayments can cannibalize subscriptions, they can help publishers sell more subscriptions by building a long-term relationships with their users. Micropayments enable a publisher to understand paying intent and interest - unlike metered paywalls that only capture user interest, micropayments act as a bridge between zero and recurring revenue.

In price-sensitive economies like South Asia, micropayments can do wonders to build a subscription journey.

TipJar:

In the TipJar model, there is no monetary obligation. Users can pay what they want (or nothing) as a token of gratitude to publishers. This model has no gating or access limitation. The idea of this model is to allow users to support the publishers and the content creator as they see fit rather than asking for a fixed fee.

While the TipJar model increases accessibility and engagement on the platform, there is no reliable way to predict revenue and monetize the content.

Timer Paywall

Pioneered by ConsCent, this paywall aims to create FOMO (fear of missing out). Spice up the subscription offers by calling it a ‘Limited Time Offer” or “Flash Sale for 24 hours”. Timer paywalls are a way to get quick conversions with a limited-time offer. Inspired by the e-commerce industry, the timer paywall drives faster purchases at a relatively lower price and can be used by publishers worldwide to drive weekend sales; nudge engaged users who have been delaying the purchase for quite some time quicker closures and achieve revenue targets.

Hybrid or Intelligent Paywall

This is best suited for the evolved platform, which has millions of new and old users coming to the platform. Powered by artificial intelligence, paywalls are only shown to users with the propensity to subscribe. You can customize your offering for users based on loyalty segments – driven by behavioral patterns of reading and frequency, and time spent.

The good part is that an AI-based scoring system can choose user sets to show a paywall and content sets to put behind a paywall. This kind of paywalling also has the least impact on digital ad revenue, as paywalls are visible only to users with the highest propensity to subscribe.

If the publisher chooses to gate content and not users, using propensity, only the content that has the propensity to get subscribed goes behind a paywall. Rest remains open. If a content’s propensity drops, the paywall lifts – causing the least damage to digital ad revenue.

Also, because of the propensity, publishers have the best conversions. For example, The Wall Street Journal's flexible paywall has 60 variables and adapts to reader behavior. It measures reader activity across 60 variables and then adapts the wall to each reader's behavior, delivering a free-story limit only in the areas of their interests. This gives subscription marketing teams unique powers to monetize interest and intent.

Similarly, Hearst Newspapers replaced its simple paywall in March 2018 with a flexible paywall, allowing first-time readers to access as much content as they want. The system detects a reader's interests and focuses on those specific interests, such as sports fans getting inside stories, art lovers getting cultural offers, and food lovers getting a pitch about recipes or restaurants. At Hearst's Albany (New York) Times-Union, the total number of digital subscribers has doubled since it started tests in September 2018.

Revolutionize your paywall strategy with Conscent.ai, the cutting-edge subscription stack designed for the future of news media companies. With powerful analytics and personalized customization options, you can identify key segments, optimize paywall scenarios, and measure KPIs for maximum engagement and conversions. With a 360° view of your audience, Conscent.ai helps you unlock your growth potential and achieve the best revenue outcomes. Get in touch with us to experience the future of paywalling today.