The Weekly Bulletin | November 5, 2024

Hi SODP community,

Let’s recap on what’s been happening, the new content, industry updates, tips, and more.

TIP OF THE WEEK

Despite what many consumers may believe, digital content isn’t free. Producing great articles, blogs, videos, and podcasts takes time and money; digital publishers must find ways to recoup these costs.

While paywall adoption has grown since the early 2010s, gating content remains a thorny issue, with most audiences still trying to avoid paying for access.

If you are thinking about implementing a paywall, here are some of the advantages and disadvantages to consider.

Advantages of paywalls

• Consistent revenue: Ad revenue volatility is hardly a new phenomenon. Subscriptions provide publishers with a relatively stable income stream compared to advertising.

• Data ownership: Publishers with a successful paywall strategy have access to a swathe of first-party data that is becoming increasingly valuable in the face of the ongoing “pro-privacy” revolution.

Disadvantages of paywalls

• Requires quality, unique, consistent content: I’m not suggesting that having to produce great content should be a reason to avoid paywalls. But it’s essential to be realistic about the level of competition in the publishing marketplace.

• Could hinder growth: Paywalls can be a great approach for sites with a preexisting audience willing to pay for their content. However, a paywall can impede the early stages of a start-up’s audience growth.

• Bypassing is still possible: Typing “paywall” into Google will return a slew of articles on the first page that discuss how to bypass them while searching for “how to bypass a paywall” itself returns hundreds of thousands of results.

Paywalls are powerful tools for publishers, helping them generate revenue consistently while building comprehensive audience profiles. But that’s not to say they are the right choice for every publisher.

Creating a successful paywall strategy requires trial and error, as well as the will and resources to experiment with digital content to determine what truly resonates with readers. This isn’t always viable for new or smaller publishers.

SODP POSTS

Clara Soteras Q&A: SEO Opportunities & Battles for Digital Publishers

Clara Soteras is an SEO for News expert and up until last month, she worked as SEO and Product Director at El Nacional, a Spanish news outlet, where she has created the SEO team from scratch. She had also set new workflows between editorial, business and strategy teams to increase traffic and visibility in order to enhance the revenue of the company.

Clara was also leading an editorial project related to AI and working to incorporate it into the newsroom.

READ MORE

JOB BOARD

➡️ The Daily Dot is seeking an audience development manager (Remote, Austin, TX, US). SEE MORE

➡️ De Zaak is looking for a commercial director to join its team (Amsterdam, Netherlands). SEE MORE

➡️ Microsoft AI Web Data team is looking for a principal product manager, AI platform (Redmond, WA, US). SEE MORE

COMMUNITY BUZZ

Industry News

➡️ ChatGPT search officially launches: OpenAI is beginning its long-awaited ChatGPT search product – with a wider rollout in the coming months. ChatGPT search will cite its sources via inline citations and a Sources button underneath its responses (answers) to queries. READ MORE

➡️ The official Core Web Vitals documentation was updated with new details on Interaction to Next Paint (INP) scores. READ MORE

Social Media Discussions

➡️ Carrie Rose on LinkedIn:

SEO is NOT in awareness stage of the journey

For sure, it can have a role in awareness and bring awareness to lesser known brands

But SEO plays a huge role in consideration, evaluation, and explore.

The user is considering booking a holiday, doing DIY, getting a new outfit, and SEO helps facilitate that search, help become a considered brand, when exploring and evaluating.

Theres a new and updated user journey from Google themselves, labelling this “the messy middle”.

Brands are more and more lost in the messy middle because when users are exploring and evaluating - your brand is nowhere to be found. That’s both on Google and off (social search).

Discoverability is key here

READ THE FULL POST

These are the highlights for the last week.

Until next!

Vahe Arabian and the editorial team at SODP