Creating good content takes time. And when people spend time, they should be compensated for their labor in the form of money.

This goes double for people in marketing and communications. We need this content to do our work, so we need to find ways to support the creation of this material. We are incentivized to push people to pay for content – both through our own places of employment and in our personal lives. 

I’ve been reflecting on my own content purchasing decisions. It’s become clear that figuring out exactly how to get people to plunge into subscribing and encouraging retention is very difficult. 

How much will people spend? 

People are willing to pay for content – but perhaps not as much as we expect. Here’s what the data says: 

The average household in the U.K. spends nearly £42 a month on subscription services, according to research done by Barclaycard. This includes newspapers and magazines, streaming services like Netflix, and delivery services like Amazon Prime. Governmental research found only 16 percent of respondents said they had a subscription to a newspaper or magazine.

In America, the landscape is very similar. A study from last year found that Americans spend $66 a month on media, which includes streaming video, audio apps and even premium social media tiers. And despite spending being roughly flat, the vast majority of people felt that they were spending too much on subscriptions.

To put this in perspective (and to rely on the work of Alan Rusbridger), today’s total media spend is less in real terms than buying or subscribing to a single paper in the morning and evening.  

Media spend is heavily concentrated on a few successful publishers. No media brand is doing better than the New York Times, which now has more than 11 million global paid subscribers, more than 90 percent of whom are digital only. Then there’s a clutch of famous brands with over one million international subscribers: The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, the combined Gannett papers and The Economist.

But beyond these digital ‘winners,’ it’s a long tail competing for several billion remaining media dollars. 

Getting people to take the plunge 

We’ve established that personal media budgets are limited (although certain power subscriptions do skew the curve). So then, it’s time to focus on what’s getting people to take the plunge. 

Recommendations are important. It’s notable that podcasts, Patreons and Substacks all typically feature reciprocal (or paid) promotion for other brands. If you’ve subscribed to one creator, hopefully, a new one is at least somewhat aligned with your taste. 

Substacks typically feature a sample issue. This can be the most recent free post, or something that was at some point that’s now available for free. It’s the model deployed by the stereotypical drug dealer – give people just a taste, and they will come back for more and more and more.

Free trials are somewhat common for magazines. Individual publishers tend to askew them, perhaps knowing that too many people will either binge a year’s worth of content or that alumni of The Pirate Bay generation will just create a series of false aliases for perpetual access. 

The paradox of the paywall 

Many emerging brands have a hybrid approach. Some material is locked only for paying subscribers, while others are available for all. 

I subscribe to several Substacks (well, technically, some of these are hosted on Beehiv after a short-lived boycott after platforming some Nazis) and well, I’ve noticed an inconvenient truth. Most of the time, the really good stuff is actually in the free editions. Essential internet chronicle Garbage Day has a Friday edition focused on a roundup of online conversations, but honestly can’t hold a candle to the full-length essays, memes and jokes anyone can get for free on Monday and Wednesday. 

When Rusty Foster went on hiatus from writing his hysterical summations of the daily discourse, Today in Tabs, to hike the Appalachian Trail, he took his mostly free writing and put it behind a one-time fee. I remember a probably too-sonorous conversation in a pub where a friend and I both lamented that while we thought we ‘should’ subscribe to this effort at self-actualisation, what we really wanted was the thing we’ve been getting for free all these years. 

Puck News, a rapidly growing collection of semi-independent reporters around entertainment, media and politics, has a free podcast and a selection of newsletters for free. Their full, well-reported stories, along with a series of premium newsletters are solidly behind the paywall. But the newspapers’ steady diet of scoops and shared posts online mean it’s never far from the conversation. I think this is one of the media brands that’s gotten the balance exactly right. 

Always keep testing 

I believe creators should borrow something increasingly de rigeur for legacy print publications: the sharing button. The Financial Times is pretty typical – paying subscribers get 30 article links, each of which can be accessed up to three times. 

It’s enabled me to drop incredible Long Reads or analysis pieces in the group chat without the tedious refrain of “We don’t have a subscription.” The New York Times and The Economist have both significantly loosened what’s possible. Instead of just the useless legacy ‘share to social’ buttons, you can now send your friends something that you found powerful. 

Letting your current audience do the curation is both simple and smart. I love being able to share a special piece of writing with someone I know – I bullied my whole family into reading Jordan Salama’s 13,000 word odyssey about Ecuadorian migrants documenting a fantasy version of their lives on TikTok, along with the reactions of the older generations left behind. 

Otherwise, you risk just disappearing. 

If you go too tightly – it can be hard to escape your hermetically sealed ecosystem. I sometimes try to tell people about the great stories you can see in The Times or even The Telegraph, but since no one can read them, it largely falls on deaf ears. My colleague Andrew Marshall is a huge fan of The Information, but I find its footprint quite small, so I frequently forget it exists.

I ultimately want to be a content booster. I encourage publishers of all sizes to experiment with models, packages and price points to encourage more reading and support greater amounts of quality journalism. We all stand to benefit. 

Jon Schubin runs Cognito’s content business. He is based in London.