What happens when a publisher with 1,200 articles, 50 years of archives, and a deeply loyal niche audience can’t figure out how to get new visitors to stay? Ben Moss of The Moss Report had that exact problem. His solution: a curated free content bundle paired with an 18-email drip campaign. This lifted free registrations 20-30% and drove a paid conversion spike every time a newsletter goes out. This episode of the Paywall Podcast is worth bookmarking if you’re sitting on a deep archive and wondering why casual visitors aren’t converting.
In this episode, Pete talks with Ben Moss, publisher of The Moss Report and Townsend Letter — two independent publications covering integrative cancer treatment and holistic medicine. The Moss Report has been running in some form for nearly 50 years, built on the investigative work of Ben’s father, Ralph Moss, who was fired from Memorial Sloan Kettering in 1977 for refusing to suppress cancer research findings. The publication charges $228 a year for full membership access to 1,200+ articles, two podcasts, and a custom member dashboard. What Ben shares about his registration and nurturing strategy applies well beyond the health niche.
The Problem with Deep Archives: Too Much Content, No Entry Point
When new visitors landed on The Moss Report homepage, they were met with a menu of 15 categories and six or seven subcategories each. The content was genuinely valuable. But there was no starting point, no path forward, and no reason to hand over an email address.
“We used to have what I would call information overload… 15 different categories and maybe six or seven subcategories in each. It didn’t offer people a clear entry point or direction as to how they should proceed.” — Ben Moss
This is a common trap for publishers who have spent years building an archive. The content density that signals credibility to longtime readers can paralyze a newcomer. Without a guided on-ramp, most first-time visitors leave without registering — and without an email address, there’s no way to bring them back.
The Promise: Give New Readers a Place to Start
The shift Ben made was conceptually simple but took months to execute well. Instead of asking visitors to navigate a sprawling archive, he built a curated bundle of about 20 articles called the Essentials of Cancer, a guided reading path designed specifically for someone new to the publication and new to integrative medicine.
The bundle functions as a free registration offer. Visitors who provide their email get access to the full set. Everything else on the site stays behind the paywall.
The Solution: Three Tactics That Work Together
1. Build a Curated Content Bundle, Not a Metered Article Count
Most publishers use a meter: give visitors 3, 5, or 10 free articles before hitting the wall. Ben took a different approach. Rather than letting visitors pick whichever articles they want, he curates the specific content new readers should see first. The bundle tells the story of who The Moss Report is, where it comes from, and what makes it worth paying for.
The result: free registrations increased 20-30% after launching the Essentials bundle. Paid conversion numbers held steady, which Ben expects to improve as he refines the content in the bundle and adds writing specifically for that section.
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“Rather than having the customer come and pick which article they want to read, we’re giving them the set of articles we feel have the highest value for them as newcomers — almost our philosophy, I guess you’d say.” — Ben Moss
The curated bundle also solves an SEO problem. Metered paywalls depend on visitors finding individual articles through search and hitting a wall after a few reads. A dedicated free content landing page can rank on its own, attract new traffic, and convert visitors directly into registered users.
2. Run Three Separate Email Tracks
Once a visitor registers, the email strategy kicks in. Ben runs three distinct tracks through Flowletter, Leaky Paywall‘s WordPress-native newsletter platform:
- Paid member updates — a personal note from Ben when new content is published, written in his own voice, linking directly to new articles in the member dashboard.
- Free subscriber drip — an 18-email sequence for registered readers who haven’t paid yet. Each email pairs a link to accessible content with an extra nugget of information not included in the article itself, giving readers a reason to open it beyond a simple content roundup.
- Non-subscriber onboarding — for people who haven’t registered at all, showing a mix of free-access and paywalled content to demonstrate the range of what’s available.
The drip campaign is the engine of conversion. Ben’s observation: every time a newsletter goes out, paid subscription numbers go up.
“Every time I send out a newsletter there’s a spike in onboarding of paid subscribers — and even free subscribers if we’re sending them out to that audience as well.” — Ben Moss
3. Time-Wall Content to Create Urgency for Free Subscribers
Ben uses a third tactic that most publishers overlook: temporarily opening paywalled articles to free subscribers, then pulling them back behind the wall after a set period. A new article gets added to the free registration tier, goes out to the free subscriber list, and then reverts to paid-only after a window of time passes.
This creates a reason for free subscribers to come back to the site promptly — and while they’re there, they encounter the upgrade messaging that moves them toward paid.
The time-wall functionality runs through a third-party WordPress plugin. Leaky Paywall also has a built-in Archiver extension that handles this — worth checking before buying separate tools, since the WordPress-native approach keeps everything in one system.
The through-line in everything Ben described is that the tactics only work because the content behind them is worth paying for. The Moss Report doesn’t run advertising, has never taken sponsored content, and charges a flat annual fee with no upsells. Subscribers who pay $228 a year often do so partly as a show of support for independent journalism on a topic that mainstream media ignores — something closer to Patreon than a typical content subscription.
Ben’s biggest lesson from 50 years of publication history:
“My biggest failing has been not using and trusting my own voice to talk to our subscribers more. The more I do that now, the more interest and correspondence and activity I see.” — Ben Moss
A curated content bundle and a well-structured drip campaign are the mechanics. But the voice behind the emails — and the trust that voice builds over time — is what actually converts a free reader into someone who pays.
Watch the full conversation:
