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3.1.6 Encouraging free subscribers to become paid subscribers

It will be hard for your subscribers to pay for your Ezine if you have been publishing a free Ezine all along. The obvious question in their minds would be “What is so special about your Ezine now that you are charging a fee to read it, and what was it lacking in the past?”. You need to come up with a plan to make this transition as smooth as possible for you as well as for your readers. Your readers should not unsubscribe from your Ezine but instead continue as paid members. It is not going to be easy to convince existing as well as new readers to enroll for a paid subscription. That said, it is not impossible as well to do so.

Here are some tips that might help you convert free subscribers to paid subscribers.

Suggest the change subtly to your readers

Don’t just drop a bomb on your readers one fine day and announce that from next issue on you would want your readers to pay a subscription fee and if they don’t pay up then you won’t deliver Ezine to them. This is not only rude; it is also a bad move on your part. Your readers need to be motivated in order to pay for your Ezine. Hence, suggest it as delicately as possible to your readers, by giving many reasons that have forced you to take this step. For example, you can’t meet the production costs, the expert fees are too high, the web space provider has hiked the price as your subscription base has increased in past one month and so on. I would recommend that instead of focusing too much on reasons, you should always try to highlight the ‘many’ benefits of your paid ezine. Justify the transition!

Don’t scrape down your free Ezine completely

You can’t just take away the free Ezine from your existing members. If you want to get your readers to pay for your Ezine, give them something to hold on to. Continue some sections of your Ezine as free sections and charge fees for exclusive interviews, reports, archives and so on.

Offer them freebies


‘Free’ is one word that everyone loves. You can provide some incentives to your existing readers by offering them free customized reports, exclusive tips by an expert, free one month membership, discount, even tangible free gifts such as coffee mugs, tee-shirts, posters, etc. You can also collaborate with other websites that offers cash that can be used on the merchandize sold on that particular website, conjoined trial membership to some other website, gift vouchers, and so on. You can also come up with a scheme where in if your existing members become members before a stipulated time, they get heavy discount or another such ‘freebie’. The choice is limitless; you just have to think it through.

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