SODP Dispatch - 15 September 2023

Paywall for publishers, SEO tools and resources, and more tips and news for digital publishers

Author

State of Digital Publishing
September 15, 2023

Happy Friday!

Today, let’s talk about journalism as a profession and what the future holds for those who choose journalism as a career.

Our managing editor, Andrew Kemp, discusses this subject in his weekly Editor’s Note column:

I sat down to write this week’s missive intending to delve into the financial challenge of working as a freelance journalist.

I’d been mulling over whether full-time freelance journalists were an endangered species, increasingly relying on other income streams to put their kids through school and keep a roof over their heads. It made me reflect on my time as a freelancer and the fact I couldn’t imagine surviving purely on journalism to pay the bills. Talk about playing life on hard mode.

After covering publisher worries over content monetization, I wanted to touch on how this can be felt at the very edges of an organization. I think of freelancers as a canary in the publishing coal mine; keep a close eye on them if you want to check an organization’s pulse.

But as I thought more about it, I wondered whether staff journalists and freelancers might not be in a similar boat.

Reading interviews of journalists who had changed careers revealed a common thread for most of them: they had bills to pay and journalism (including freelancing on the side) wasn’t cutting it.

This problem has been growing for years, with the financial shortcomings of a journalism career underpinning the hacks vs flacks discussion. Employment in newsrooms has been declining since the turn of the century, with many jumping ship to the public relations industry.

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FROM STATE OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING

MONETIZATION
WHAT IS A PAYWALL? A COMPLETE GUIDE FOR PUBLISHERS

Once upon a time, when journalism was stepping into the digital world, the main concern on everyone’s mind was about revenue: would readers pay for online news? Was the classic advertising model enough? How would newspapers and magazines survive in this new scenario?

The paywall method entered the scene as a response to the decline in the advertising and has been around enough for us to get rid of some myths. The fear of implementing a barrier that could slow visitors down in their clicking journey is still present in some publishers’ minds, but the context is not the same as when this concern was first raised.

Today, editorial brands have a more direct relationship with their reader, so the interest has swift into how to find a paywall strategy that works, rather than wondering if it should exist at all.

SEO
PAYWALL SEO STRATEGY: A GUIDE FOR PUBLISHERS

Audience monetization is a key issue for every digital publisher. While ad revenue remains a reliable strategy for many outlets, some may be better served by implementing a paywall.

But for online publishers, successfully introducing a paid subscription model is easier said than done. One study suggests that while three-quarters of digital publishers have some form of paywall, only 10% enjoy a thriving digital revenue model.

Given the challenges of successfully implementing a paywall — from picking the best paywall service provider to selecting which type of paywall will convert visitors into subscribers — it’s essential that publishers understand how their paywall might affect their search engine optimization (SEO).

TOOLS AND RESOURCES

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BITE-SIZED INDUSTRY NEWS

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
News sharing app Artifact adds Links, a section where users can post any type of link and discover links through a Following page or an algorithmic For You page. Read more

SEARCH
Google September 2023 helpful content system update rolling out. This update should take a couple weeks to roll out and is the first update of this kind since last December. Read more

MONETIZATION
The Economist plans to introduce a new subscription tier this Thursday called Economist Podcasts+ for $4.90 monthly. Read more

AUDIENCE ENGAGEMENT
Asking your audience for story ideas, and following through, can help increase subscriptions and improve audience perceptions of local news outlets, according to research published this summer. Read more

BUSINESS OF DIGITAL PUBLISHING
The Sporting News raised $15M led by Playtech, valuing the outlet in the “eight figures”; TSN was founded as a newspaper in 1886 and became digital-only in 2012. Read more

RESEARCH
A study of 7,266 users from the US, the Netherlands, and Poland: non-news websites, like entertainment pages, expose people to more politics than news websites. Read more