Thinking outside the box with paid subscriptions
More and more publishers are trying to figure out ways to keep more of their content in front of the paywall.
Welcome! I'm Simon Owens and this is my media newsletter. You can subscribe by clicking on this handy little button:
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Thinking outside the box with paid subscriptions
The first question comes from Taegan Goddard
Exclusive content and no advertising are common offerings for digital subscribers. But what are some of the more creative items you’ve seen in a subscriber bundle?
Good question! And I think it’s one that a lot of smaller publishers are asking themselves as they realize how difficult it can be to produce a high volume of both free and paid content simultaneously. I’ve written about this before, but every moment spent creating content that’s locked behind a paywall is time not spent expanding your audience. And if you’re not expanding your audience, then it becomes incredibly difficult to find new paying subscribers.
If you’re a large media outlet like The Wall Street Journal or New York Times, then this isn’t a problem because you have a huge editorial workforce at your disposal. But if you’re an individual creator or run a small media outlet, then that balance is more difficult to maintain.
That’s why more and more publishers are experimenting with new ways of providing value to paid subscribers that require locking less content behind a paywall. Here are a few ways they’re going about that:
Access to an online community
This is one of the most common strategies I see. Subscribers are given access to an exclusive online forum that isn’t available to the wider public.
It’s easy to see why a subscriber would find this valuable. Depending on the niche of the community, you can generate extremely thoughtful discussion when those participating in the discussion are your most devoted readers. Participants can leverage the community to crowdsource ideas or troubleshoot their individual problems.
This can also be great for the publisher because it requires less effort than producing paid content. Sure, you have to dedicate resources to moderating the community, but for the most part you can simply sit back and let the community generate its own content.
The challenge with these communities is they can be hard to jumpstart, especially when your subscriber base is still low. If you only have a few dozen paying subscribers, then the community will be a virtual ghost town when they go to visit it, and they won’t have any incentive to return.
The best way to jumpstart a community, I’ve found, is through heavy participation from you, the content creator. This sounds like it could be time intensive, but it doesn’t really need to be. I maintain a private Facebook group for my newsletter subscribers, and I will literally just throw links to articles I’m already reading into the group, and I’ll add in a dash of commentary. I’m also super responsive to comments, but again, it really only takes a few seconds to hash out a reaction to something someone has said.
So even if your private forum starts off as a ghost town, then your subscribers are still incentivized to return to it because it gives them personal access to you. Speaking of personal access…
Live Q&A streams and other kinds of behind-the-scenes access
Another great way to give subscribers personal access is through live video streams. You basically announce that at a specific time, your subscribers will be able to click on a link that will take them to a live stream with one of your content creators. Subscribers are then able to submit questions — either by chat or by voice — and the content creator responds to them in real time.
This kind of content is not only great for passive consumption, but it allows subscribers to feel like they’ve had a hand in creating it. Some publishers are even able to take recorded versions of these livestreams and redistribute them for free on on-demand video channels. This strategy essentially allows them to have their cake and eat it.
I’ve seen creators also give other kinds of behind-the-scenes access. For instance, the YouTuber Johnny Harris illustrates custom maps for many of his videos, and one of his Patreon subscriber perks is that he sends you high resolution images of those maps. These are materials that he’s already producing anyway, so simply sending them as a subscriber perk takes very little additional effort.
Physical objects
This is an area where there should be more experimentation from publishers. The best example I’ve seen of it is the New Yorker’s tote bag. New subscribers to the magazine get a free tote bag in the mail, and it quickly became a widely-adopted fashion accessory. I live in DC and it’s rare for me to venture out into my neighborhood without seeing at least one of these iconic bags. We have at least two of them in our own apartment.
I actually think the best physical object you can offer to subscribers is a physical zine. These are stapled-together publications that are relatively cheap to produce, and by limiting it to just one zine a year, you can minimize the logistical hurdles that come with mailing out a physical object.
I’ve seen this strategy adopted by several Patreon creators. Tim Pratt, for instance, is a well-known science fiction & fantasy writer, and he offers a Patreon tier where he offers to “send you a signed and illustrated short story chapbook at least once a year.” The writer Ernie Smith also tried this out with his newsletter Tedium: “I’d like to announce that Tedium will be releasing a limited-edition zine that will only be produced in numbered editions for everyone in my $5 Patreon tiers and higher,” he wrote. “Anyone in the U.S. who wants one should sign up, because I’m only going to be doing a single run, which I’ll send out sometime in October. If you miss it, you miss it.”
Not only is a print zine a tangible benefit that subscribers can hold in their hands, it’s also an advertisement for your digital product. I’ve always had a soft spot for print zines as a medium, and it would be cool to see them make a comeback!
How this newsletter evolved over the last eight years
The next question comes from Wil A.
You recently passed three years of posting on Substack
How would you say your writing style has changed?
So I wouldn’t say my writing style has changed, per se, but the content and format certainly have. I would break this newsletter’s history into four distinct eras:
Era 1 (2014 to 2020)