The Wall Street Journal is testing a 24-hour guest pass on its website, allowing non-subscribers to bypass the hard paywall when a WSJ story is shared by a subscriber or staffer, according to Media Post. When non-subscribers access a link from a subscriber, staffer or social media, the guest pass offer pops up. Non-subscribers do not need to provide a credit card number to accept the offer, but they do need to provide an email address.

WSJ began testing the guest pass system on August 12, said Media Post, with additional tweaks possible in the near future. Why the change in paywall philosophy? Because strict paywalls and pricey subscriptions turn away casual readers who may want to sample the content before making a commitment, said Nieman Lab.

In an interview with Shan Wang for Nieman Lab, Dow Jones chief customer officer Katie Vanneck-Smith commented on the experiment.

“We’ve been successful at having a digital paywall, but we haven’t innovated it in a number of years. Now we’re making sure that instead of a one-size-fits-all approach for customer groups, we have a more sophisticated approach that’s dependent on customers and the stories they’re previously reading,” Vanneck-Smith said.

“Everything our journalists and members share through social channels will act as an invitation and is the beginning of a personalized journey for the guest member,” she added.

Another reason for a more customized approach is because Facebook and Google are becoming a place to discover news, so drawing readers directly to the WSJ site is important, explained Vanneck-Smith. WSJ is not among the publishers that have agreed to provide videos or live streaming on Facebook Live, and it only publishes technology stories via Instant Articles, according to Nieman Lab.

We are subscribers to the Wall Street Journal, so we signed out of our WSJ account to test the new offer, but we only received the 12 weeks for $12 offer when we clicked on article links via Twitter. We did notice a change on the WSJ Twitter feed (http://twitter.com/WSJ) though. Tweets with article links now show a padlock in the unlocked position. We were able to read each of the articles we clicked on, after clicking out of the 12 weeks for $12 offer.

The Wall Street Journal is one of many publishers struggling to find the right balance between hard paywalls, metered paywalls and casual readership. Earlier this year we wrote an in-depth report about the Winnipeg Free Press which studied its readership and made big changes to its business model last summer, which included subscriptions, a metered paywall and micropayments, appealing to a wide range of readers – the one-and-done reader who won’t register or share information, returning readers who may not hit the meter every month but who will keep coming back for content, and the loyalists who read dozens or hundreds of articles each month.

Insider Take:

WSJ is smart to recognize that paywalls are not a one-size-fit-all solution, and each publication has different types of content and readers with varying needs. Publishers need to strike the right balance between free and paid, while giving their content the opportunity to be discovered.

Offering a 24-hour guest pass is a great way for WSJ to gather quantitative and qualitative reader data without requiring a commitment from casual readers. Doing it on an experimental basis will give the WSJ a lot of information on which to base future paywall and subscription pricing decisions. We encourage all publishers and subscription companies to test variations of their paywall to find the right mix that best meets their needs and the needs of their target audience.