I must say that the hook and lede of Medium articles are very effective. They are sticky and grabs your interest. The frustration comes with the paywall. There must be another way, like a free summary (maybe use ChatGPT) that will compel me to pay.
Most other metered paywalls move the paywall much lower in the page. That would be a simple way--let you get 1/3 of the way so you are more confident in what you are getting. Or move the location of the paywall.
In general though, we love being subscription driven rather than ad driven and I don't expect that to change.
> let you get 1/3 of the way so you are more confident in what you are getting
It's really interesting to see different perspectives here (especially yours, as the CEO). To me, I feel the opposite: I would rather know immediately on page load if I'm going to be allowed to read the whole article or not. If I get 1/3 of the way through and then get hit with a paywall, I get really frustrated, and even if I would consider subscribing, that frustration pushes me away.
For the consumer, it's very much not like "see 5 articles and now you got me as a subscriber".
I'm not sure what your ratio of free-to-premium content is, but I have a feeling it needs to skew more towards the free side to build engagement again. I hardly ever go on Medium now, but I used to a lot.
