Blogging for free

About a year ago i started a blog in the tech niche which I did not monetize at all, however I had been pumping it up on social media(reddit, FB, stackoverflow etc.).
Recently it got a lot of attention, got up to about 30k unique visitors a month.
With that I recognized a lot of missed earning potential was had and most people in this niche have ad blockers of some sort install.
Luckily I built this site with the GhostCMS which by default lets you integrate a paywall for your content.

I now publish 5 articles a week with 3 of them being paywalled. Viewership has taken a hit, as expected with a decision like this not all the readers are happy about it.
I did manage to get ~500 subscribers to the paid plan though. They each pay $0.99 each month for access to the additional articles and now i have a decent little side income from a project I never originally intended to monetize.

Wow that's really amazing, Congrats keep working on it

That's awesome, congratulations. Now time to just scale it up.

But that cms though? wordpress still rules? No? What happened?
With wordpress you can do a lot more things
Ex:
Offer readers 7 day free trial so that they get a taste of what's behind the paywall.
Like what substack.com do.

PoisonedYeti said:

Luckily I built this site with the GhostCMS which by default lets you integrate a paywall for your content.

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I suggest getting rid of that paywall as it's killing your traffic. Why not write a post saying, "Please support the site by buying me a coffee"? You can always code it in or just put ads up. I think with both; you can make out pretty well.

IM Rider said:

But that cms though? wordpress still rules? No? What happened?

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Wordpress while dominate on the web has run out of steam. Yes it is still the most supported and biggest CMS on the market it lacks in many way. Speed and security specifically come to mind. Also I could offer a trial with Ghost so im not seeing the draw back of using it for something that is JUST a blog. I'm hard pressed to find a better blogging CMS than Ghost. While WP advertises being a blogging platform as you said, it has evolved into so much more and that brings with it much over head from a technical stand point that I simply do not need.

Mrnewbie said:

I suggest getting rid of that paywall as it's killing your traffic. Why not write a post saying, "Please support the site by buying me a coffee"? You can always code it in or just put ads up. I think with both; you can make out pretty well.

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You bring up a very valid point. I could try this. Probably with more success than the paywall. I'll try in a month or two when the people who subscribed to the exclusive content's subscription has run out, don't want to further jade readers by having them pay and then go free again. Doesn't seem like a good look. I could to a post about on X date we will do away with paywall and add a donation button. Then see which model performs better.

Congrats You should make some ads and invest to get more subscribers

donaks said:

Congrats You should make some ads and invest to get more subscribers

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Probably. It's weird having turned a passion project into a monetized project for me tbh.

It is more fun when You do what You like and earn.