As I update my long-neglected website and here review content relevant to forthcoming book Be a Better Blogger, some long-ago posts are surprisingly still relevant. I refer to “Can You Charge for News? Ask Google” (August 2009) and “The Price You Pay Google for Paywalls” (April 2010). The first looks at three different content sites and their visibility to Google search. Each uses a different paywall strategy. The second story assesses a website with all content behind a paywall.
Four years later, blog, news, and other content websites still grapple with the paywall question. Whether to charge? What to charge? When? Competition from sites delivering free content is major consideration. But another is often overlooked in the public discussion: Visibility in Google search.