By Minal Bopaiah

If you haven’t heard the news, Slate is launching a new premium site this week called Slate Plus. The new site will offer new and original content, including podcasts, exclusive articles by fan-favorite Slate columnists and other member benefits.

While covering the news, some media analysts have been critical of Slate’s decision to adopt a separate, paywalled site rather than a metered model. However, as our Case Studies on The Week, Popular Science and other consumer publications illustrate, separating paid content by content type tends to work best for magazines and lifestyle publications. Metered access works best for hard news sites, where the day’s top story could be from any department.

Keep in mind, Slate still has a freemium model that allows consumers to sample content. It’s just that instead of separating free and paid by the amount of access, they’ve used an upsell model, not unlike Hulu’s Plus service. Consumer expectations for access to paid content can vary by publication and content type, and many media analysts miss this nuanced understanding, possibly with the underlying assumption that there’s a one-size-fits-all model. Plus, it doesn’t make sense to disrupt a profitable advertising-based site; starting a sister site with different, original content is a much better way to upsell subscriptions.

Slate Plus starts at $5 a month or $50 a year, which is an unusual price point; most pricing specialists would advise against round numbers, recommending $4.99 and/or $49. However, given the changing trends of the Internet and Louis C.K.’s success in $5 pricing, Slate may be on to something. Only time will tell, and fortunately, lowering a price point in order to generate more conversions and revenue is a lot easier than raising it.