One day, the Toronto Star newspaper launches a paywall—a “new paid digital subscription program that will allow readers to receive full access to all of the award-winning content on our website across all devices…” says publisher John Cruickshank. Another day, the San Francisco Chronicle drops its paywall after just two months. “The SFChronicle.com site will continue to provide readers with an online version that replicates a newspaper experience and reflects the changes in the news…”

This summer, the Sun, Britain’s largest newspaper, launched a new digital subscription package that turned their website into a paywall, where you have to take out a membership to access. It was called exciting at the time. Two days ago, it was called “disastrous” in a blogpost in The Guardian. (Monthly site visits down by 62.4% from 37.3m visits in July to 14.4m visits in August.) Something about codes in the newspaper that could be redeemed sounded way too complicated.

In specialized publishing, the landscape is also varied. Joe May of Pro Farmer told me that they are going to offer more free content in hopes of lead generation. Others prefer to keep most of their content behind a wall/gate/enclosure. Regardless, you can see that there is no consensus on what works best. After an excellent discussion on the SIPA Member Listserv a couple months ago, Molly Lindblom, principal of Business Transformations, adeptly and kindly wrote up the following: 

A Guide to Formulating Your Paywall/Free Content Strategy

1. Define the objective. Are you trying to drive traffic to support an ad model? Generate leads? Upsell? Build a community? Lots of ways to go. Defining your objective will help you determine your strategy and ways to measure success. Let’s go with Generating Leads.

Strategies:

- Consider your target. A high level decision maker (VP,CEO, CFO) may require a different offer such as a white paper or strategic industry analysis, etc. A director/manager may find news or analysis on a very specific topic rings their bell.

- Require something in kind. Contact info (name, title, company name, email) and/or other commitments such as spending 10 minutes on a call to provide feedback on a new product or answering a five-question survey. Not only does this help you achieve your goals, it’s a way to reinforce the value of the content that is being given away and moves the sale along.

- Don’t let them get their fill through a freebie. Limit free trial duration and restrict content access. There needs to be incentive to purchase.

- Build awareness/drive traffic. Email, SEO/key words and highly targeted paid Google ads are just a few ways to do this.

- Name it well. The name should reinforce the value of paid vs. free. A few options:

** Levels: Silver, Gold and Platinum or Value vs. Premium 

** Description: Today’s Headlines vs. In-depth Analysis 

** End Benefit: Quick Tips vs. Insight

- Always brand. Include your brand—such as MDM Premium. If you get nothing else, you will build brand recognition.

2. Define next steps. Sales or customer support should follow up on leads within a few days if not same day so they don’t go cold. Sign up for a free offer is an indicator of immediate need for your content. If you are entirely marketing driven, nurture the lead to build knowledge of your offerings, benefits and special incentives. This can be time consuming but it generally pays off.

3. Metrics. Make sure you have a measurable goal so you can determine what worked/didn’t work (opens, click throughs, time spent on site, bounces, leads generated, alignment of leads with target market, content accessed, sales driven) so you can determine how to modify your campaign going forward.

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Ronn Levine began his career as a reporter for The Washington Post and has won numerous writing and publications awards since. Most recently, he spent 12 years at the Newspaper Association of America covering a variety of topics before joining SIPA in 2009 as managing editor. Follow Ronn on Twitter at @SIPAOnline