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Pitchfork · B2C · music review site

Make readers register to read a site that was always free

Backlash the next day; wall taken down to reset the product first

Failedpaywall

What they did

Put up a registration wall for certain Pitchfork visitors. A big editorial announcement the next day drew backlash about the new wall, so the team removed it entirely, paused, and planned to re-monetize after fixing the editorial product. Guest says walking it back earned goodwill.

What happened

Heavy backlash; the registration wall was removed and monetization paused.
Effort
live for about a day

In their words

How Condé Nast Experiments, Bundles, and Wins — Michael Ribero, Condé Nast

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Michael Ribero… if you're talking to a product team and they really want to advocate for one part of this should absolutely be free because we want the most people using it. I think there's that internal debate and ultimately if you can align KPIs, I think those conversations become a lot easier, but often I would love a show of hands of whose company's KPIs are completely aligned so you can all make perfect decisions. It's zero. I know it's zero. So those two.

Michael RiberoAnd then lastly, I think just willing to be wrong and maybe willing to walk back. I think about us, we put up a registration wall. We have a property called Pitchfork. It's for music fanatics, it's focused on music reviews. We put up a reg wall, registration wall for certain folks. The next day, there was a big announcement on the editorial side, and the backlash that we got of, "You're going to put up this reg wall to now make us register when it was completely free before and now you're doing all these changes."

Michael RiberoI mean, it was hard. And so we just took it all down and we said, "You know what? We're going to pause and we're going to reset once we figure out the editorial product part of it right, and then we'll try to remonetize it at that point." And I think I would say we're going back through this process again of is now the time, is now not the time? I think we earn goodwill by being willing to say, "Hey, we're going to walk back on what we ultimately …

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Tags: registration-wall, backlash, walk-back