At the Audiencers’ Festival Montréal, Emilie Harkin, SVP of Growth at The Guardian, broke down what actually motivates readers to give money to a publication with no paywall.
Key takeaways to copy & share
The Guardian doesn't have a paywall, anyone can read it, whether they pay or not. So the 1.4 million people who choose to give money anyway aren't paying for access, they're paying for something else entirely > Ownership is the product: The organisation's value proposition comes down to three words - global, independent, free. Owned by the Scott Trust, their sole purpose is to ensure The Guardian can keep publishing. It's this that's sold to readers > One email, built entirely around that pitch, generated $2 million. When The Washington Post and LA Times pulled their 2024 election endorsements, The Guardian sent readers a simple message - we published ours, and always will, because no billionaire can tell us not to > But it's the method that's worth noting rather than the moment: The Guardian surveys readers right after they give, with the goal of understanding the why. The top answers include protecting the free press, editorial independence, or the journalism itself > These surfaced motivations don't just become a slide that's presented once to the team, they're used to build every single message that asks for support. They keep telling the story, deliberately and repeatedly
The Guardian doesn’t have a paywall. Anyone can read it, regardless of ability to pay. So every dollar it raises from readers is, in Harkin’s words, an elective transaction: nobody is required to give anything to keep reading. That constraint is exactly what makes The Guardian’s reader revenue data useful to anyone running a subscription business, paywalled or not, because it isolates motivation from access. People aren’t paying to get in the door. They’re paying for something else entirely.
