Paywalling ≠ Paid Subscribers: What Actually Works on Substack in 2025

What no one will tell you about the new "rules" around paywalling

Ah, paywalling.

When I started on Substack (way back when), I assumed paywalling was the way (and the only way) to have paid subscribers.

Flash forward five years and 700 private clients and helping thousands of you, the one thing I know is that paywalling ≠ paid subscribers.

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What no one else will tell you: The new “rules” around paywalling in 2025

1. Paywalls work

In a session with a client yesterday, we were about to dig into what was happening on her Substack and how to optimize it when she said, “Well, I discovered the most amazing thing: People pay when a post is paywalled.”

For example, would you pay for this post right now if it weren’t paywalled?

Probably not.

2. Don’t paywall young

Paywalling is the gateway drug to disillusionment on Substack.

It also isn’t necessarily the only or best paid strategy. The other two I found that work are the transactional/service model and the NPR/patronage model. I won’t go into all three because next month, paid subscribers will be guided on how to upgrade (pun intended) their paid offer in 2025-2026.

Before you paywall anything, answer these two questions:

• Are you posting consistently, and have you been doing so for at least a year?

• Do you have enough paid subscribers that you won’t feel as though you wish more people were reading what you post? If you have 100 subscribers, writing for 2 can sometimes be disheartening.

3. Free isn’t always inviting.

Common advice says to keep your newsletter 100 percent free to maximize growth and build trust. Sounds nice, like something ChatGPT would spit out, but we don’t actually trust things that are completely free (read my Note on the topic here).

4. Don’t autopaywall your archive.

When you opt to automatically paywall the archive in Settings, you aren’t doing yourself a favor. Substack’s default is to interrupt mid-sentence with an ellipsis, which doesn’t make for happy, long-term subscribers. They may become a subscriber to read that post, but it’s unlikely they’ll stay.

5. Paywall intentionally.

Insert paywalls strategically. Paywall where it makes sense. Your intentionally paywalled posts will then live in your archive. Then send subscribers to paywalled archived posts in free posts. Put a call to action (reason to subscribe) at the paywall in italics with a block quote.

6. Think twice before paywalling the comments.

It always makes me sad when I’m working with a client who’s a wonderful writer and bringing their work to the world and getting engagement (people reading their work!) and then see a paywalled post with no engagement except a stray heart here or there.

Worse, I then see that the entire post was basically free and only the comments were paywalled.

Unless you’re paywalling them to protect your paid subscribers from trolls (valid) or are using the comments in a challenge or some other community event, keep them open.

7. Don’t waste a paywall on a template.

If you want to offer templates or PDFs to paid subscribers but don’t want to paywall the comments, put the PDF on a separate paywalled post page. That leaves the comments open for all.

8. Don’t paywall a post because you’ve written something that makes you feel vulnerable.

I hear this more often than you’d think: This is a deeply personal essay, so it should be paywalled. Yes, it makes total sense to want to share something you’ve written that feels vulnerable with your paying fans, not passing readers, but don’t paywall it and send it to everyone. That’s not being honest. Just send it to paid subscribers.

9. Do not send fully paywalled posts

I received a fully paywalled post from

Rick Rubin

in my inbox the other day. Yeah, it was just the paywall. I don’t care who he is. Not cool.

10. The 7-day free trial is dead

I know Substack says the free trial leads to 10-20 percent more conversions, but on which Substacks? Maybe on a news or business Substack that’s posting every day or several times a week, but probably not one that only comes out once a week or twice a month. (On most Substacks, people aren’t spending their free time digging through the archives.) Seven days isn’t enough time to make a difference.

Besides, a 7-day free trial hasn’t been a novelty or felt like an advantage in a long time. We know you want our credit cards and for us to forget about the subscription.

For a free trial to work, they need to be nurtured, and we really don’t have that functionality right now.

11. Teaser

Most digital media publishers stopped using free trials circa 2024 in favor of “teaser posts,” the ability to unlock one free post.

They convert massively, but Substack doesn’t have them set up in email or on the web, so they’re only on the app, which doesn’t help us much.

12. People don’t pay for more.

Conventional wisdom said that when paywalling, give people a lot (i.e., a deep paywall), and they’ll want more.

No. Deep paywalls don’t work anymore.

A behavioral study analyzed millions of visits to regional and local news websites and tracked how people responded to paywalls. (The study wasn’t done on newsletters, but it’s still valuable if we think of ourselves as digital media publishers, which we are.)

Essentially, researchers found that people didn’t convert at the paywall if they felt they’d gotten enough—even if it was only an overview or stand-first, i.e., a summary.

We live in an era of too much “content” and not enough time. If a subscriber feels like they’ve gotten the gist, they aren’t going to pay for more.

13. Your free preview should be a trailer

Whatever you show free subscribers, make it enticing. Instead of “teaser = short,” think “teaser = I want to read more.” It shouldn’t be words leading to more words.

14. Include messaging above the paywall to free and paid subscribers

Paid subscribers do not see our paywalls. They have no idea what they’re getting as part of their paid subscription unless we tell them.

At the paywall, include messaging that tells paid subscribers this is for them and invite free subscribers to access it, something like, “This essay/post/update/roundup is for paid subscribers. It’s a _______—upgrade to get access.”

Not necessarily this but something like this.

15. Remember that you’re at a huge disadvantage because Substack’s paywalls are so 2023

I asked for this about two years ago: customized messaging we can use to speak directly to our subscribers when they hit the paywall. The messaging we have is terrible: This post is for paid subscribers.

Publishers are shifting to dynamic and AI-driven paywalls that adjust prompts and the length of previews based on a reader’s behavior and how long they’ve been subscribed. Early adopters are seeing a 35-75 percent growth in paid subscriptions.

Let’s hope a bit of that $100 million goes toward giving us paywalls made to convert.

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A few last thoughts…

What to paywall

What to paywall is a much larger question that can only be answered by your paid offering and strategy.

We’ll be talking about this next month, including how the three paid models that work on Substack that I established (and people have run with) have changed as the platform has gotten more crowded, why keeping paid subscribers is a lot easier than chasing them, what people don’t pay for anymore in the age of AI, particular concerns for writers, and why the fact that getting paid subscribers is hard is the best thing that could happen to you.

Good reasons not to paywall:

• User Experience: If adding a paywall limits what you offer, e.g., people subscribe to you to interact in the comments (paywalls always block free subscribers from commenting), you might want to reconsider it.

• You’re just damn idealistic and won’t. The wonderful Iowa journalist

  Laura Belin
  will never paywall because she wants to give everyone access to her work, which is exceptional, so everyone go become a paid subscriber to her and keep local journalism alive.

• You want to keep out ChatGPT, Claude, et al. Someone could copy and paste paywalled text into ChatGPT without you knowing it, but, yes, technically, paywalling will keep AI at bay.

Wait, don’t paywalls make people mad?

Well, yeah, it’s a paywall. One person advising people about Substack said last month that paywalls are “off-putting.”

Paywalls aren’t off-putting if they’re 1) fair or 2) worth it.

What does fair mean?

• Who knows.

• The truth: Some people just think they deserve to get things for free and (obviously) believe in unpaid labor for everyone but themselves.

• Rarely is it a question of the person genuinely being unable to afford it. Most of us are charging less than $10/month with the annual. That’s the price of a Tovolo Scoop and Spread Tool (a “bottom-of-the-jar spoon companion,” i.e., a spoon just for when you’re at the bottom of the jar), glow sticks, and a paint by numbers set, and less than the Fanice Eos Food Dice Decider (yes, a die you roll to decide if you should cook or go out for Mexican, Chinese, etc.—it’s a real thing).

• People don’t pay when they don’t see the value.

What is value?

• That’s a whole other issue, which I’ll help you solve in my writing course—How to Write a Substack Devoted Readers Will Pay For (10/17 - 11/21).