Despite all the hand-wringing that launching a metered paywall can induce among ad-supported news sites, it looks like they’re actually pretty good for revenue growth.

A recent study by Press+ of the company’s 400-ish existing clients found that the average monthly subscription price is now $9.26, up from $8.83 in July of 2012 and $6.66 in July 2011. That’s a 39% increase overall, and 5% in the last six months.

In addition, most clients are lowering the number of free articles a site visitor can see. The new average is 10, down from 13 at the beginning at 2012. As our new Benchmark Report shows, some sites can even go as low as 3 free articles per month.

But most counter-intuitively, the growth in paid subscription prices and the lowering of meter counts doesn’t seem to have decreased advertising dollars.

However, that may change. Research for our recent Benchmark Report also found that the majority of paying subscribers expect an ad-free experience when purchasing content online. The problem is that the survey (conducted by Nielsen) asked about content, and ad-free television is already a consumer expectation because of premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime. Whether news consumers will come to expect the same service online remains to be seen.