With John Paton’s announcement that Digital First Media will adopt metered paywalls, Ken Doctor estimates that 41% of US daily news sites now offer digital subscriptions for online access.That’s huge growth in the three years since The New York Times first launched its metered paywall in 2010. Advance remains the one big newspaper conglomerate to not implement paywalls.But despite popular belief, The New York Times was not the first paper to launch. Dailies like The Arkansas Democrat-Gazette have had restricted access for nearly a decade before NYT came on to the scene (read our Case Study on ArkansasOnline.com — the Democrat-Gazette’s website — here).The Digital First announcement, however, adds 75 dailies to the online subscription industry (already generating $18 billion a year in revenues). Digital First Media has decided to adopt Press+ as its paywall platform, which may make implementation easier, although at a cost. As I explain in our 2013 Online Subscription Benchmark Report, the standard Press+ paywall is missing some critical features to help conversion rates, like a one-column form and eye-catching CTA button.Fortunately, sites like ours are dedicated to helping newspapers and other online content publishers crack the code of marketing paid content and selling more online subscriptions!