Reader revenue scorecard

The scorecard measures how well your publication is set up to earn money directly from readers — not how much you currently earn. Ten questions cover five areas, two questions each: strategy and model, pricing and plans, conversion and funnel, retention and churn, and data and tools.

Each answer is worth 0, 1 or 2 points. Conversion and retention answers are multiplied by 1.5, because in practice those two areas move reader revenue more than anything else: a publisher with a great price list and no win-back sequence loses more money than one with an average price and disciplined retention.

The result is a score out of 100, a letter grade, a per-area breakdown and three prioritised fixes drawn from your lowest-scoring answers. Nothing is submitted or stored.

Strategy & model

A defined paywall model, written down, with one named owner accountable for reader revenue. If you are still deciding, the paywall model finder narrows it to one recommendation, and our reader revenue strategy guide covers how to weigh advertising against subscriptions.

Pricing & plans

Monthly and annual options, a deliberate price, and tiers that match how different readers buy. Annual plans lift retention because they remove eleven cancellation decisions a year. See subscription pricing for publishers for tier design, trials and raising prices safely.

Conversion & funnel

A metered or registration step before the wall, and a fast, well-designed checkout. Most readers should meet you before they meet your wall — a meter, a registration step or a newsletter signup. Use the metered paywall calculator to test free-article limits, and how to add a paywall to your website for the checkout itself.

Retention & churn

A churn number you watch monthly, automated failed-payment recovery and a win-back sequence. Involuntary churn — expired and failed cards — is usually the cheapest thing to fix. Read how to reduce subscriber churn and quantify the upside with the subscriber lifetime value calculator.

Data & tools

Subscriber and revenue numbers in one place, connected to your ESP or CRM. Mocono includes a built-in subscriber CRM and Zapier integrations, so subscriber events reach your ESP without manual exports. Our templates library has ready-made win-back and failed-payment sequences to plug into it.

Every question is worth up to 2 points, so the raw maximum is 20. Before totalling, each answer is multiplied by its area weight: 1.5 for the four conversion and retention questions, 1 for the other six. That gives a weighted maximum of 24 points. Your weighted total is divided by 24 and multiplied by 100 to produce the score out of 100.

Grades are banded at 80–100 (A — Optimised), 60–79 (B — Solid, with gaps), 40–59 (C — Foundations only), 20–39 (D — Early) and 0–19 (F — Not yet set up). The three priorities are the questions where you lost the most weighted points, so a conversion or retention gap outranks an equally sized gap elsewhere.

This tool provides general guidance for planning purposes only and is not financial, tax or legal advice. Your answers are never submitted or saved — the scorecard runs entirely in your browser.

• Reader revenue: a strategy guide for publishers — Mocono
• Subscription pricing for publishers — Mocono
• How to reduce subscriber churn — Mocono
• How to add a paywall to your website — Mocono
• Paywall model finder — Mocono
• Metered paywall calculator — Mocono
• Subscriber lifetime value calculator — Mocono
• Publisher templates library — Mocono