Monday 15th June: Testing reader conversion strategies with timewalls and promo codes

Good morning! Today's Media Roundup is brought to you by Esther.

As the number of national media outlets charging for content approaches 40% globally, the competition for reader revenue is hotting up, meaning that publishers are looking for new ways to work out who is most likely to pay. Enter the 'timewall'.

A timewall is a paywall which uses time spent on the site as the decider of when to go up or down. In this piece, digital edition platform Twipe explores how publishers in Germany, the US and Sweden are playing with time in their paywalls. There are some really smart strategies in play here, and definitely worth looking at for any publishers who are eyeing up paywall models.

Talking of reader revenue strategies, this initiative from the Dallas Morning News gives journalists their own promotion codes to allow readers to get 1 free month of digital access to the site. Personal, heartfelt messaging from reporters about why their work is important seems to be paying off, with 2/3rds of free trial take-ups converting to full subscriptions. Not a quota in sight...yet.

There's no time like a pandemic to launch a print magazine apparently! The 'Bloomberg Green' brand first debuted in January as a web vertical and daily newsletter, and the new mag will focus on climate change solutions. For a bonus point, it's printed on 100% recyclable paper.

Getting the tech stack right can be a daunting challenge for member-driven newsrooms who don’t have an in-house technologist. This piece from the Membership Puzzle Project lays out key considerations when trying to choose the right tools for managing your membership program.

This week's podcast

Adriana launched a dedicated Instagram account for the LA Times' archival photos late last year, so we talked about where those images are sourced from, what the response has been, and how they've used historical images of protests to add context to the events of the past few weeks.

We're nearly 80% of the way to covering our remote recording costs for the rest of the year, so thank you all so much for your support so far!