Sign up to continue reading

I’ve begun to notice that many popular news organizations now require you to sign-up to their newsletter to simply read the articles on their website.

This, I think, is a mistake. With a one exception.

If it’s something I sincerely want to read, by a source who I respect, about a topic I want to regularly learn more about, well then of course, encouraging me to sign-up with a pop-up is probably worth the cost of interrupting me.

That being said, I have little doubt that this perfect storm of occurrences happens less than 20% of the time. Maybe even less than 10%.

That’s because when most people come upon an article online, they do so serendipitously. They're looking for an answer to a question (not looking for heavily researched piece), and their perfectly fine with going back to click on another search result if they don’t immediately find what they’re looking for.

Moreover, even if they are looking for articles to read (as I often do), the ubiquity of alternative news that’s freely accessible makes it overwhelmingly likely that I’ll simply find another article.

It sucks that news organizations have to stoop so low to encourage people to sign-up for (and pay for) readership, but doing so at the expense of interrupting the few who actually want to read it is a mistake.

Better to encourage people to opt-in than to coerce them into signing up, at the risk of losing the interest of those who care enough to read it in the first place.