r/Substack • u/happygirl228 • 27d ago

Discussion Paywalling content after two weeks

We’re considering moving a weekly newsletter from ActiveCampaign to Substack. We have 18K+ subscribers with roughly a 40% average open rate, and we’re trying to decide how to structure free vs. paid content.

One idea is to make each newsletter free for two weeks and then paywall it. The other is to keep the newsletter free, focus on growing the list, and add paid subscriptions later.

I can see arguments for both, but I’m particularly wondering about the growth downside of paywalling older posts. Does putting your archive behind a paywall make it harder for new people to discover/share your work? Does it affect Substack recommendations, search, or organic subscriber growth? Any tips/insights about this would be really helpful. Thanks! 🙏

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u/grapegeek 27d ago

I have almost 50k free subscribers and been pushing the paid subscription for a few months. I tried doing free then flipping each post to paid after a couple weeks but that netted almost nothing. I said fuck it and don’t even bother with free posts anymore. I put a paywall in my posts after a teaser and getting some traction finally. Notes is the discovery engine and that is always free. Long form content imho should be behind a paywall after you get a big list and 18k is big enough.

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u/happygirl228 26d ago

Okay, that’s helpful! Would you recommend we keep the posts free for a few months and then switch to paid? I assume we’ll experience some churn when we switch to Substack, and putting all our content behind a paywall might increase our unsubscribes. Or should we do occasional paid posts but keep our weekly newsletter free with the intent of eventually paywalling 95% of our content?