Dealing with the pay wall economy is not easy

Originally published July 2018. Updated January 2026 with observations on how subscription fatigue and platform proliferation have reshaped the economics of paying for content.

The subscription explosion 

When this post was first written in 2018, the subscription economy was already growing. By 2026, it has exploded—and the problem of limited consumer budgets has only intensified. 

The average person now juggles subscriptions to streaming services (Netflix, Disney+, Apple TV+), music platforms (Spotify, Apple Music), cloud storage (iCloud, Google Drive, Dropbox), productivity tools (Microsoft 365, Adobe) and increasingly, news and journalism platforms (Substack, Patreon, individual publication subscriptions). 

The core insight from 2018 remains true: people allocate a fixed budget to subscriptions, creating fierce competition among publishers, app makers, and content creators.

What's changed is the sheer volume of services competing for those dollars. Publishers learned that how they frame subscriptions matters, but even good framing doesn't solve the budget constraint problem.

A vision of hell

Ben Brooks gets close to the heart of the problem with pay walls when he writes Subscription Hell. It’s hard to make money from pay walls.

The few online sites that do well from pay walls are those like New Zealand’s National Business Review or The Economist. Both serve well-heeled audiences with unique, quality content readers can’t get elsewhere.

Brooks makes two interesting points.

First, differentiation. Brooks is thinking about podcasting, but it applies to all online media. In essence he says there are thousands of undifferentiated podcasts chasing the same audience.

…but will they pay?

The implication is that no-one will pay to listen to one of the podcasts when there are dozens of free alternatives. You could say the same about most online media. This, in part, does not apply to pay wall successes like the NBR and The Economist.

Their audiences don’t have obvious alternatives.

The other point is subtle. Brooks makes the connection between people paying for apps and buying pay wall subscriptions.

On the surface these are two quite distinct markets. And yet, recently I was thinking about exactly this concept from the opposite point of view. I have a number of subscriptions to pay each month. Some are for apps or online services. Others are for, it’s a horrible word to use, but let’s go with it: content.

Pay wall, subscription software: two aspects of the same thing

When budgeting, the two are aspects of the same thing. I allow myself so many dollars a month for subscriptions. It’s a single pool of money to cover digital services like cloud storage, online music, movie downloads, pay walls and apps. What isn’t spent on apps is available for media. What isn’t spent on media can be spent on apps.

A decade ago the budget was zero. It’s not zero today. While it isn’t a huge amount of money, it’s about the same as I spend on coffee. It may grow larger in the future.

Two decades ago, in the mid-2000s, the budget for digital subscriptions was essentially zero for most people. By 2018 it had grown to a modest amount. By 2026, the typical household subscription spending has ballooned—one estimate suggests US households now spend over $200 monthly on subscriptions, with many unaware how much they're actually paying. 

Yet despite this growth, the pool still isn't infinite. Every new subscription competes with existing ones. Journalism had to learn this lesson the hard way.

The issue is, consciously or not, people only budget so much money for subscriptions. We have a limited pool of funds. So does everyone else. The world has a limited pool of funds for subscriptions.

On a world scale it is huge and still growing. Even so, there is not enough to go around for everyone who would like to earn money selling pay wall subscriptions or apps.

Too many sellers, too few buyers.

And there's the problem. It's not hopeless. Micropayment services and reader-supported platforms have evolved since 2018. Substack, Patreon, Ko-fi and Buy Me a Coffee offer ways for readers to directly support creators. I use New Zealand-based Press Patron and can recommend it.

Some publications experiment with bundled subscriptions or tiered pricing to capture different budget levels. But fundamentally, the challenge remains: too many sellers competing for limited buyer budgets. The newspapers that missed their opportunities to build early subscription habits now face even fiercer competition than they did in 2018.

But it’s difficult. The market for content pay walls or subscription software is not infinite.

Subscription fatigue sets in 

In 2026, we're seeing subscription fatigue. People are overwhelmed by the number of recurring charges hitting their accounts. Many have begun rotating subscriptions—subscribing for a month, binge-watching or reading, then canceling until they need it again. 

This presents new challenges for publishers and creators who need predictable recurring revenue. The answer isn't obvious, but journalists who use their core skills to build genuine communities tend to retain subscribers better than those treating it purely as a transaction.

More on journalism and media:

This post is part of ongoing coverage about journalism business models, digital adaptation and the subscription economy: 

• Apple's iPad won't save newspapers.
• Lack of local technology news damages industry.
• Why I'm a technology and business writer, not a geek.
• Does online media fill the gap left by newspapers.
• Old school journalism writing habits are powerful tools.
• IndieWeb offers independence to journalists.