BostonGlobe.com’s paywall doesn’t seem to be the rainmaker it is for its parent company, The New York Times.Recent reports of BostonGlobe.com’s free trial offer (April 24 – May 6) allowed me to take a closer looks at the company’s conversion and revenues. It turns out that Beantown’s flagship news outlet has only been able to convert 18,000 readers into paying subscribers since instituting a paywall last September. With 6.2 million unique visitors in 2011, that puts the site’s conversion rate at about 0.3%.That also means that the site can be expected to garner about $3 million in subscription revenues this year. Compare that to The New York Times with 450,000 paid subscriptions and a conservative estimate of $77 million in subscription revenues, and you can see why the powers-that-be at the Globe are willing to buck best practices by offering a free trial without requiring a credit card number (we strongly recommend against this).Some have speculated that the low conversion rate may be because the Globe has failed to articulate the benefit of its online platform, other than the site’s ability to adapt to any mobile device. It may also be because the Globe doesn’t have the national (and international) appeal of the New York Times. Plus, putting free content on Boston.com and having a more stringent paywall on BostonGlobe.com (there’s no metered access like the Times), makes it a difficult sell with no foot-in-the-door offer. And lastly, the Globe has chosen to make online access free to its print subscribers. While this may be an enticing tactic for some papers, valuing online content separately and pricing it similar to print has allowed other legacy print publications to garner more profits during this period of trial-and-error in the digital publishing industry.