Salon.com Editor Looks Back At Paywalls

Techdirt pointed out an interesting retrospective by Scott Rosenberg, former managing editor of Salon.com, about their experiments with paywalls and how repercussions can last a lot longer than some might expect. "More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is 'closed' to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out."

Comments

viewers weren't stupid, they were pissed off

[SuperBanana]

More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused about how to get to read Salon content. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again. Paywalls are psychological as much as navigational, and it's a lot easier to put them up than to take them down. Once web users get it in their head that your site is 'closed' to them, if you ever change your mind and want them to come back, it's extremely difficult to get that word out.

Oh man, that's rich. So, users are just "stupid" and "hard to reach"? I think "pissed off" is more like it. Let me reword that for you, Salon:

"More important, by this point the public was, understandably, thoroughly confused and annoyed as to why they had to pay for Salon content or watch ads when they didn't have to anywhere else. It took many years for our traffic to begin to grow again after we finally realized Paywalls are like trying to charge people for air or sell refrigerators to Eskimos. Content is plentiful and none of our articles were special or unique enough to justify the cost or trouble for viewers. Once web users find your site requires them to do more than just read content, if you ever realize you were completely stupid and want them to come back, too bad, because they already found other free content they like, and you already pissed them off."

Re:He's correct: bootstrap to survive

[ewe2]

Actually, I did read the TFA and you're missing my point completely. Learn to read.