Several weeks ago, I had a meeting with a publisher and the question posed was whether paywalls should be considered a viable long-term solution to drive profits from their traffic.
We both thought about the question at length and realized that the answer is yes and no. We both agreed that yes, paywalls are “a necessary evil,” because they stop a consumer from consuming all your content for free and no, because they also stop consumer engagement.
All consumer engagement is not equal
New technology is continually being presented to publishers that infers a consumer’s “likely” state of mind while visiting your site and what can be done to get them to the ultimate goal of becoming a paying subscriber. This alone will produce an incremental level of success.
What if you need more than incremental success?
What we have learned in the digital age is that your publication is now competing with EVERYTHING that is digital, not just your region’s other standard bearer newspaper or magazine publication.
No matter the level of consumer insights gleaned from AI analysis or intuitive response, the fact of the matter is that when your publication was only in print, you likely never had millions of people every day with their hands on your news rack.
Real potential subscribers and actual subscribers will always be the least amount of traffic to any publication’s site. All the people that read the newsstand headlines as they walked by but never bought the paper; these people will always be most of your digital traffic.
No comprehensive insight can be derived about this consumer that is of value. They are quite simply not buyers of your product. That does not mean your product isn’t incredible or timely or possibly even award winning. It simply means that this consumer’s habit is to get as much as they can for free.
In the digital age we are bombarded with free content all day including advertisements, notices, news headlines, trending videos, etc. Obviously, this is not insightful reporting nor important analysis, but it does fill a consumer’s visual content bucket for the day, and that will always be enough.
The digital reality is that nearly all the consumers who reach out to touch your product are unlikely to ever pay you for your product. These same consumers would also agree that most publishers have an amazing, tremendously vital and highly valued, yet perishable product. But those consumers, rightly or wrongly, also assume they will see the same information available later the same day for free.
The consumer’s benchmark digital behavior has been set in stone.
The parallax view
You cannot have a horse provide cow’s milk, but you can have a cow pull a horse’s plow.
We cannot change the reality of a consumer’s benchmark digital behavior, though we can adapt how we react and generate massively positive and profitable outcomes.
This is what Make It Free has accomplished for publishers.
Nearly all your consumers want your content for free, so now you can give it to them and Make It Free will pay you every time this action occurs.
Your new reality becomes most of your traffic now enjoying your article before it perishes, and you getting paid net profit from most of your traffic! Equally important, you have not only positively engaged with the consumers who have their hand on your digital news rack, but you’ve also produced a net profit!
Our service is free to publishers and is simple, your consumer who normally exits when they see your paywall, instead clicks on our button that states “Read Article Free with Make It Free.” We present a sign-up modal that states they can read the article for free if they agree to receive four branded emails from us.
During the past nine months that we’ve been providing this service to publishers we have seen on average that 32% of the consumers that click our button on a paywall, immediately sign-up and then return to use our service on the same publication an average of 4.2 times per month.
Make It Free enables publishers to monetize the 90%+ of consumers that your paywall currently turns away.
Reach out to Kevin Smith (regional president) at Kevin@MIFpartners.com to see a 15-minute presentation that will turbo-charge your 2025 net profits.
We can’t change reality, but we can enable you to profit from it.
Everybody wins when you Make It Free.
Wade Bradley is CEO of Make It Free.
