Daily Mail publisher MailOnline is set to finally cave in and join news websites which have introduced paywalls to some articles.
Though the majority of articles will remain free to view, as reported by The Telegraph, the move to a partially paid-for service could take place as early as January and would end MailOnline’s stint as one of the final sites to resist charging readers.
MailOnline itself is one of the most popular news websites in the UK, second only to the BBC with 23.9 million users, as per Ipsos Iris data.
Most of its 1,500 stories published each day will remain free to read, according to reports, with an initial 10 to 15 being placed behind paywalls in a bid to drive revenue.
This would see it follow the likes of German tabloid Bild, which began charging for some features a decade ago and has 675,000 subscribers.
Larger, English-speaking publications have also made the move to pay-to-view models in recent decades, including the Wall Street Journal in the mid-1990s, which has 3.5 million subscribers.
The only larger paid-for news site - the New York Times - introduced subscriptions in 2011 and has 9.4 million subscribers, as per PressGazette.
Some 39.5 million people collectively subscribe to the world’s largest English-speaking online news sites, which also includes the likes of The Financial Times and The Guardian.
Though MailOnline is yet to firm up the plans, the move would come in the face of deteriorating advertising revenues across the sector, alongside lagging social media traffic.