Bättre Stadsdel, an independent local news site in southern Stockholm, switched from Leaky Paywall’s older inline signup form to List Builder, our full-screen registration wall.
In the 30 days to 19 October 2026, Bättre Stadsdel’s revenue was 3.8x its average monthly revenue. New paid subscribers rose 4.2x and new free subscribers rose 2.6x.
Free signups started climbing within days of the switch. Steady daily revenue followed several weeks later.
Who is Bättre Stadsdel?
Bättre Stadsdel is an independent local news site for southern Stockholm, founded in 2014 by editor-in-chief Mats Falck. It covers four districts (Hägersten-Älvsjö, Skärholmen, Enskede-Årsta-Vantör and Farsta) with a newsroom of 2 to 3 staff plus freelancers.
The site is funded by advertising and subscriptions, and runs on WordPress with Leaky Paywall.
Free registration and paid plans were already in place. Readers get one free article, then register free to read one more before the upgrade message appears.
But growth had stalled. In late July, free signups were a trickle, and many days brought in no revenue at all.
What was holding subscriptions back?
A review of the paywall, pricing, and checkout flow found three problems.
1. The registration wall was easy to scroll past. Quick Register showed a small signup form in the middle of the article, competing with the sidebar and ads all around it. That mattered even more on a site where most readers are on their phones.
2. Ads showed up at every conversion step. Ads appeared beside the registration gate, above the pricing table, and at checkout. That pulled readers away just as they were about to pay.
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Sign up for expert advice straight to your inbox.3. The pricing page was flat. The plans sat side by side with nothing highlighted to steer readers toward the annual option. It also lacked a family or business plan.
What did Bättre Stadsdel change?
Over 10 weeks, starting with a strategy call with our team, Bättre Stadsdel made four changes.
1. Switched to a full registration wall. On 4 August, they replaced Quick Register’s inline form with List Builder, which takes over the screen. One form now handles both signup and login. With the old form, readers who already had an account often mistook it for a login box and hit an error.
We translated the wall copy into Swedish and set up Insights to track every signup and sale.
2. Stripped the conversion pages down to the offer. The subscribe, register, and profile pages lost their header, footer, sidebar, and ads.
3. Rebuilt the pricing page around the annual plan. The annual plan now carries an “Our tip” badge and the main button. It also spells out the math: about kr33 a month, and kr189 less than paying monthly for a year.
A family plan took the third slot: kr699 a year for 3 people or kr999 for 5. The 3-person option costs kr498 less than three annual plans.
Each plan card sells what the reader gets, not just access: the daily newsletter, a weekend events roundup, and the archive back to 2014.
4. Added business plans. Below the plan cards, a separate banner offers workplace subscriptions for teams of up to 10, 50, or 200 people, from kr2,995 a year. Every employee gets their own login. The pitch is local: “Give your employees an overview of the area you work in.”
Results
| Metric | Change |
|---|---|
| Revenue | 3.8x |
| New paid subscribers | 4.2x |
| New free subscribers | 2.6x |
| Total conversions | 2.7x |
Source: Leaky Paywall Insights, as of 19 October 2026. Change compares the last 30 days with the monthly average of the 60 days before.
Free signups rose within days of the registration wall going up. Paid revenue followed about six weeks later.
Before List Builder, free signups were a trickle. After the wall went up on 4 August, they started climbing right away and kept climbing through September and October, with the busiest days running many times higher than in July.
Through August and early September, revenue still arrived in occasional spikes, with plenty of zero days in between. From mid-September, money came in almost every day. Paid signups went from the occasional single sale to new subscribers most days.
What can you learn from Bättre Stadsdel?
A full registration wall builds your list faster than an inline form. After the switch, Bättre Stadsdel’s free signups in the latest 30 days ran 2.6x the monthly average of the 60 days before.
Your list grows first. Revenue follows. Bättre Stadsdel’s free signups started climbing within days of the switch. Revenue didn’t turn steady until about six weeks later. If your list is growing, keep the wall up while revenue catches up.
Keep ads off the pages where you ask for money. Ads and subscription offers on the same page work against each other. You don’t have to drop ads everywhere. Just keep them off your subscribe, register, and checkout pages.
Lead with annual and show the math. An “Our tip” badge plus “save kr189” tells readers which plan to pick and why. Annual subscribers also churn less than monthly ones.
If you cover a local area, sell to the businesses in it. Bättre Stadsdel’s business plans pitch the subscription as a way to know the neighborhood your company works in.
Is your registration wall a form readers scroll past? Does your subscribe page still carry ads? Book a strategy call and we’ll review your site the same way we reviewed Bättre Stadsdel’s.
