Paywalls are a great way to persuade people to sign up for memberships – give them a taste of your brand new content, hook them with the opening few paragraphs, and make them want to become a member so they can read your post to the end.

Distributing your paywalled article via email to newsletter subscribers can help incentivise them to sign up for memberships. You can also send out paywalled teaser articles to members on basic plans to encourage them to upgrade to premium plans and unlock exclusive content.

A step-by-step guide to adding a paywall to your posts:

1. Select the post you want to add a paywall to (or click New Post to start something fresh).

2. In your post, place the cursor to decide where the paywall will sit. Then, in the bottom formatting bar, click ‘+’ and click the ‘insert paywall’ padlock icon.

3. A little Paywall rectangle will appear: all the text and images you include above this rectangle will be visible to everyone, everything below the Paywall rectangle will be behind the paywall.

4. Select the pen icon on the Paywall rectangle, opening the paywall settings. A window will appear prompting you to choose an image, write a brief paywall pitch and a simple text for the paywall button. We recommend that you customise the paywall for each post, but there is also a default image and pre-written text you can use.

5. Click “Save” in the paywall settings and then “Continue” in the bottom formatting bar to proceed to the publication settings.

6. On the Publishing Settings page, under Access you can choose who is allowed to pass the paywall. The default option is that all members have access to the article, only non-members will be blocked. You can change this by clicking on ‘select only certain plans’ to pass the paywall. (in order to tempt members on more basic plans to upgrade).

7. Under Distribution, you can select how you will circulate your new paywalled article. You can either just ‘Show on your Steady page’, or also ‘Send as email’.

8. Tick the box ‘send as email’. Then you will be given the option of sending the paywalled post to all newsletter subscribers, members or both. If you have different membership plans, you can click the dropdown arrow next to ‘send to members’ to select which membership plans you want your new post to go to.

The send-out settings do not override the paywall settings, so you can send paywalled emails to subscribers (and/or members of certain plans).

Delivering a taster of your new exclusive content directly to inboxes is a great way to convert subscribers into members, and members on basic plans to premium plans.

9. Now everything’s done, you can go ahead and publish your post.

If you host your publication on a different platform than Steady, you can use our Steady paywall integration.

Got a question we haven’t answered in our Help Centre? You can contact us at support@steadyhq.com.