Let's talk content strategy: Premium written content vs. Paywalls

I've had chats on this topic with both some of the folks at Tech in Asia and the founder of Backscoop... so i figured i'd make an article out of it

Paid content is becoming more and more of a thing these days… and platforms like Substack are getting lots of additional writers into the game by making it really easy to monetize their blogs.

But what is the right strategy to getting paid for your written content?

This is a topic I want to explore… and note that I do not have data but rather am going based on my experience.

Note that there are a number of possibilities:

1. Paywalled content: meaning you need to typically purchase a special membership to read it

2. Sponsored content: meaning that there is advertising content mixed in as a normal article

3. Ads that are mixed into content

4. Other paid services: eg. recruitment postings, events, etc.
   

In general i’d argue that if you’re in the media business of running a large site like Techcrunch you probably need to be doing several of these things and not just one.

But today i will explore the first two I mentioned above.

Paywalled Content

An example would be how on certain content on Techcrunch you need to have purchased “Techcrunch+” access.

Techinasia has also followed suit for some time with their premium content and paid membership.

But to be honest this approach just has me scratching my head. Why?

They went through the hard work of getting me to click on it and then i see this paywall. And i never pay for it. And i doubt many others do either. Why?

Well in my view the question should rather be… why would i pay?

There is a TON of free content available on the net these days. A lot of it by very well known experts in their field. And so my pain point is less about finding content and more about sifting through the massive amounts of content to find the really good stuff.

And so I read folks like Lenny Rachitsky who has great posts and podcasts with some of the best thinkers in their field.

Or i read extremely robust and well written tech pieces by folks that are top in their field on blogs like ‘The Generalist’.

So when I see an article like this one written by someone who I don’t know who has questionable authority on this topic…. and i weigh it against all my other options.. it generally loses.

Then when i see this kind of paid content posted on linkedin and they get me to click.. but then i hit the paywall and bounce… it just seems like such a waste of effort on both sides.

Because they managed to cut through the hordes of free content out there and get me to click.. just to send me away frustrated.

Sponsored Content

This is the approach I much prefer to the paywall approach. Basically you find advertisers to write out well-written pieces that promote their business, which also happen to fit to the style and theme of your publication.

An example would be this article below on “How brands can stay ahead of the e-commerce curve”. The advertiser wrote it, probably had it edited a bit by Techcrunch, and then it got posted as an article.

When I saw it… I immediately saw that it was “Sponsored Content” but i read it anyway as it sounded interesting.

And i actually enjoyed the article even though it clearly did favor the advertiser who wrote it.

Now you can’t have ‘too’ much content like this.. but I also see in Substack that tons of writers are putting paid blurbs about an advertiser directly into the article. And this to me is also a very acceptable approach.

Sponsored content is essentially how Youtube ads work

Think about it.. what if you found a great Youtube video thumbnail and you clicked on it.. but then found out that you needed to buy a paid subscription to the channel first. Would you do it?

Hell no.

Because there is just so much other alternative great content out there on Youtube.

Rather bigger Youtubers these days often tend to mix in some sponsored brands into the content of the video. For example MrBeast planting a Shopify flag and talking about them while doing a video in Antarctica.

So to sum up…

I think media sites will learn more and more that paywalls are not a good approach.

They are taking some of their best content and then narrowing its audience down by like 95% because only 5% or less will be paid subscribers.

This then reduces visibility and virality of their content.

Rather I much more like sponsored content… either entire sponsored articles (which need to be interesting to read) or sponsored sections of articles.