News Ltd will soon charge readers of The Australian $2.95 a week to view all content on its website and mobile phone and tablet applications, as the country's largest newspaper publisher experiments with alternative sources of revenue in the face of falling advertising receipts.

It will be the first paywall for a general newspaper in Australia, an experiment that has achieved mixed success overseas by newspapers and magazines including The New York Times, the Financial Times and The Economist.

It will follow the approach of News Corp stablemate The Wall Street Journal. Some stories will be able to be read for free while others will need a subscription to be read, most likely to be its analysis and specialised sections.

That approach is aimed at retaining enough readers to keep its digital advertising revenue, while establishing a separate source of funding less buffeted by variations in the advertising market.

It has rejected the strict paywall of The Times in London and The Australian Financial Review, published by Fairfax Media, in Australia.