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Week 22: There are many versions of free and paid newsletters

In the early weeks of this series, I discussed writing for exposure instead of money. In a nutshell, I argued it’s smart for writers to make some things available for free as part of a larger business strategy in order to build their platform and readership. If writers are strategic and intentional in how they do this, the free work leads to paying work.

Email newsletters, especially the successful ones, serve as an excellent example of this. You’ll find endless variations on how writers make their newsletter free or mostly free while still earning money.

Old-school approach: a punitive paywall

This is the prevailing model where some content is free all the time; some content is paid all the time. This isn’t very imaginative, but it can work for some newsletters where the paid content is highly desirable and is frequently motivating. (If the content is only motivating once a year, old-school methods won’t work well.)

A more sophisticated version of a punitive paywall is a “leaky” paywall. This is what the New York Times uses: you can read a certain number of free articles every month. The Washington Post, on the other hand, has a more punitive approach and rarely lets you read anything unless you pay.

How to create a less punitive paywall

The challenge when paywalling your content—especially if you paywall the really good stuff all the time—is that you lose out on visibility and discoverability. No one wants to share articles behind a paywall; no one clicks on articles they know are behind a paywall. (I stopped clicking on Washington Post links years ago. What’s the point if I refuse to subscribe?)

So what do you do? Here are some models to consider. Many involve increasing friction for free subscribers or limiting the most desirable features to those who pay.

• Email delivery is free, but web-based access is not. In order to build your email list, you might decide to send free subscribers most or all of your content via email, but make the web archive accessible only to paying subscribers. What does this accomplish? If you’ve been writing your newsletter for a long time, you may have a large archive of valuable content, and people who’ve only discovered you recently won’t be able to read anything in your archives unless they pay. Also, unless free subscribers religiously save your emails, they won’t be able to go back and search or browse your body of work.
• Paywall your content after a set amount of time. Whatever you publish might be free for the first week or so, taking advantage of sharing and discussion online, then go behind a paywall.
• Limit community interaction to paying subscribers. You might be able to limit the comment discussions to paying subscribers, or maybe you have a Discord or community area where only paid subscribers can network with others or interact with you.
• Paid subscribers get perks. What are those perks? That’s entirely up to you and what you think would be fun to offer and desirable to your readers. Just make sure it’s sustainable for you over the long term. This has much in common with a patronage model.
• Free subscribers have ads or sponsor placements in their newsletter. This assumes, of course, that you can attract advertisers.

The model you should be cautious of

Most people don’t want merely more content as a paid subscriber, so don’t default to a model where paid subscribers receive more of the same. That said, you can find a number of successful newsletters that operate this way, such as Tangle. Their Monday through Thursday editions are sent to everyone, while their Friday edition is only for paid subscribers. I would pay regardless because I want to support their mission.

Exercise

First: Do you pay for any newsletters, or any kind of publication, such as The New York Times? Do you remember what finally motivated or prompted you to pay for a subscription? How long were you a free subscriber before you transitioned?

Second: What newsletters do you receive for free that also have a paid version? Why don’t you pay? Could the newsletter change its model in a way that would prompt you to pay? Think about the publication websites you visit frequently but don’t subscribe to, and why. For me, that’s The Atlantic. I can barely keep up with my paid reading, but I make time for a handful of their articles per month. Usually I can access what I want through a gift link.

Explore further

• ​Subscription Marketing for Authors: A Primer by Anne Janzer
• ​Inbox Collective: a good resource for newsletter-focused business models
• ​Ghost resources: Ghost is an alternative to Substack. They have a helpful newsletter for creators (look for the sign-up form at the end of the resources page).

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