Interesting post on SEOMoz this morning on the paywall question by Tom Critchlow, from the British SEO firm Distilled.

If his point comes a little late in the piece — “I think there should be a psychological shift to think of them not as walls but instead as desirable products” — Critchlow makes a compelling argument that media companies should do more beyond simply erecting a paywall.

Whenever you try and sell something, it’s important to answer the question “Why do I get if I buy this?”

That is a view most media — I’m looking at you, FT — overlook. It also is an opportunity for these companies to sell far beyond one particular story.

The niche magazine New Scientist, for example, has a huge paywall — online content is open only to magazine subscribers. But they also offer a spoonful of sugar to go with that pill: a 20% discount on the subscription, plus full access to the magazine’s archives.

Newspaper archives are enormously popular, and lucrative, and would be a tremendous perk toward the adoption of paywalls. (A discount on the print subscription would be a lesser perk, since so many titles already offer such come-ons to new subscribers.)

I especially like this thinking because it breaks away from the standard publisher complaint about paywalls — micropayments for individual articles would be more trouble than they’re worth. Instead, Critchlow argues, a new mindset about marketing could help in nudging online readers back toward the subscription-first model.