Case Study Lessons: How to Get New Visitors When You Have a Hard Paywall

While hard paywalls are the best way to protect your content and maximize revenues from paid content, they are particularly difficult for discovery and

While hard paywalls are the best way to protect your content and maximize revenues from paid content, they are particularly difficult for discovery and sampling, which almost every potential subscriber wants.World Politics Review (WPR) — a subscription site that puts every original article behind its paywall — was able to get around this conundrum by “white listing” certain domains. In this week’s Members-Only Case Study, Publisher Hampton Stephens told Subscription Site Insider how World Politics Review allows traffic from Google, social media or other search engines to bypass the site’s paywall to view an article.This isn’t Google’s First Click Free. Nor is the site metered, which would require using cookies (and can be problematic, given the changing European laws about cookies). Rather this feature is custom-coded by WPR’s developers.Visitors can bypass the paywall whenever they come to the site from search or social media, but if they click on an additional article, they’re presented with an article preview and paywall. And all the content on the homepage is paywalled, too.The custom-coding is an ingenious solution that allows WPR to maximize exposure without confusing subscribers about what they’re paying for (access to their original content and curated library of third-party links).To learn more about WPR’s other ingenious monetization methods, including using EBSCO Host as an affiliate to sell group subscriptions, join Subscription Site Insider and read the Member-Only Case Study today.