Open content for everyone?

Hi there,

Some of my users complain about articles being only accessible for registered members. They claim that registration is far too binding - although some sections of my forum are open for guests as well.

What do you think? Is closure of content a bad strategy or a necessity for increasing registration rates?

Thanks!

PS: I have plans for making some articles only accesible for *cough* paid premium memberships *cough* in the near future. Bad idea??

I guess it depends on how interesting your information is. From an SEO standpoint, you're going to be at a strong disadvantage because all that content is ineligible to be indexed (or to send you search traffic).

My suggestion would be to give the bulk of your content away, but don't be shy about keeping your very high value content reserved for registration and paid member conversion if that is a part of your business model.