37 | Is Your Free Registration Hurting Your Paid Subscriptions?

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Welcome to episode number 37 of the Paywall Podcast. I'm here with Tyler from Paywall Project, and today we're going to talk about something we've never talked about before. Free registrations. That was a joke. Actually, the topic at hand is, is your free registration hamstringing your paid subscriptions? That is actually a question I got before. And then Tyler this morning pinged me and said, hey, I have some really interesting data from some local newspapers that are, that we're setting up free registrations, of course, using wiki paywall for the first time. And that sort of fell right into, well, what's the difference between the previous setup for free registrations that were on the sites versus the current setup of free registrations? And Tyler has some, some super, super interesting data to share. And if you're listening to this and you're thinking, I have a free registration, or I've been thinking about a free registration to build your audience and to convert paying subscribers, then this is the episode for you. Okay, Tyler, where. Where do you want to start? I have, we chatted a little bit before. I have like eight major points here. Just tell me a little bit about, like the little bit about the before and after that you have, you had set up with your publisher group that.

You'Re working with right now. Yeah. So I'm bringing a number of publishers over to Leaky Paywall for the very first time. A lot of them had a free registration not through leaky Paywall, but they had sort of a free registration set up that I set up through the old system. And one thing that caught my attention after turning Leaky Paywall on and turning on the free registration through leaky Paywall is that they're, they're signing up at a higher rate than before. And this just this, today's Monday. This was on Saturday afternoon. And the number of pre registrations and even people converting to paid already feels a bit. A bit higher than before. And you know, you start to think, well, you had a free registration on the old side. Why is the free registration with leaky paywall performing at a higher rate right away? What, what's the key difference and so one thing I would recommend to all publishers who are setting up a free registration, I would highly recommend that you go through that process yourself and sign up for free. See what the experience is like. See what it like what emails get triggered, you know, is mailchimp sending something? Do I get redirected back to the content? Is there a double opt in? Do I have to click a link, figure out what that process looks like for the end user, test it out and I think this will help you decide, you know, maybe there's too much friction in the process. So double opt in it might seem like a good idea. Obviously you'd want to prevent people from putting in multiple email addresses and just continuing to get free access, but in reality it's quite a hang up for the end user to go through. Are there areas where double opt in are? Okay, probably. But I wouldn't worry too much about someone trying to sneak through with a bunch of free dummy email addresses. I wouldn't let that concern me. It's a small percentage of people that will do that regardless of the double opt in. They'll just keep making Gmail accounts until the end of time. They're never going to pay you, right?

Well that kind of segues a little bit into one of the first things that you mentioned. I think earlier we were talking about setups and the previous setup you had, I think you mentioned to me they were the setup offered like a full 24 hour access to the content versus with leaky paywall you set up something more restrictive, right?

Yeah. So the old system was giving away access based on time and not based on the number of stories or posts. So they're getting access to the whole thing for a day and so they sign up and they're able to read the whole site. Whereas with leaky there's you can restrict based on posts and you can meter, meter that access for the actual subscription level. So what, what I think is happening and I've not really had a chance to dig much into the insights on this, but what I think is happening is there they're signing up for free and they're looking at a story and then they go over and they see another story and they click on that and they're triggering the upgrade message right away. And so some of them are signing up and paying right away versus having to wait 24 hours to get that subscribe nag to Continue reading Because local news is very much a weekly event for a lot of people. They the paper comes out on whatever day it comes out and then people read it and then they're done with it and it might take, you know, a week or more for them to come back and do it again. So if you can trigger that subscribe message earlier, you've got a better shot at getting them to convert quicker.

Got it. So previous setup, free access for 24 hours, which means you can binge everything and then, then, then you, then you have to wait a week for the next maybe batch of content if it's a weekly. But you're pushing out the, the registration and with leaky, you have set up one free article and then you have to register.

Yeah.

Right away. And that's been converting more. Yeah. And, and you, you mentioned like creating accounts. Like I, I think it'd be more motivated to create an account if I knew I'd get access for a full day.

Maybe that's, yeah, like that's, you know.

I get more for my, my, yeah, my workaround.

Yeah. I mean they, we did have a double opt in function to sort of prevent mass signups on that, but it does create a level of friction and it's, you know, it's kind of complicated to understand what that means. And what do I do? I go back to my inbox. I don't know the password in my inbox. Oh my God. So it creates a, a hang up for a lot of people.

So and the other, the other setup. So you're, you're pushing the requirement to subscribe down the road with that setup versus like having one free article and then boom, you have to register right away. The second thing is, I think you mentioned about, you were talking about E Editions if, if a publisher, if a news publisher has E Editions published. I think that, did you mention that 24 hour article access included the E Edition?

That's right, yeah. And something I would recommend if you're a news publisher and you have the free registration set up, do not give access to your E Edition for free. A lot of my publishers, there's more than one E Edition in that section. So they're getting like 15 different newspapers for free. I mean you're really going to push out the time.

Right.

It takes for them to come back and subscribe. So one thing that I've done is I've locked down the E Edition which is still fairly popular despite the old format. People do still like downloading a PDF and seeing the paper and there's some content in there that's not on the site that you otherwise could not see. So I get it. And there's Advertising, sometimes that doesn't translate over to the site that people actually want to see. If you can believe that people actually want to see local advertising.

Yep.

So locking down the E Edition and regardless of the free registration, so if you sign up for that, you don't, you just don't get access to it. And so one thing I wanted to do is I wanted to change the messaging on the E Edition page because, you know, when the nag fires, it always, you know, your messaging is the same. It says sign up for free or, you know, register for free to continue reading. And so something that caught my attention with Leaky Paywall is that you can change the upgrade or you can change the subscription message to show the upgrade box message or particular pieces of content. So what I did is I locked down the E Edition page. It's not a post, it's a page declared which levels can see it and took out the free registration and then selected the upgrade. Only show the upgrade message for this page. So they'll never see the free registration button on that page and they won't go through the process and signing up and then be redirected back to the, to the E Edition and then not be able to read it and be really upset about that. So something to consider. These are very in the weeds kind of things. But until you go through the process as like pretending to be a free signup, these are things that you probably would not catch. And they have, they have big implications like these. Unlocking the E Paper and sort of the, the user experience and knowing what happens can help you make small changes that lead to big increases in signups, increases in subscriptions and so on.

Yeah. If you're selling digital subscriptions, website access, your flow has to be right on or you send people screaming. The other thing I guess I could add to that is your locking down of your E Editions to only paid subscribers makes total sense because it's, you know, big premium content that only paid subscribers should have access. Yeah, you could, you know, you could offer maybe one as a sample for free if you wanted to. Like an older version just to, just to. Or maybe it's a special edition of some kind just to promote what they have access to. The free.

Yeah, and they actually, the site that we're looking at here, this is a publisher on the northeast part of West Virginia that it's near the border of Maryland and Virginia just outside the D.C. metro area. And they have on the E Paper, there's a dropdown, they have special, like a special section of content that they release. I think it's quarterly. It's like every season there's like a new special section and so they give that away for free. Oh, okay. And you can pop in and, and see that stuff. So that's.

You can set that up.

Yeah, yeah, that's the real 3D flip book. That's which we.

Yep.

Integrate with, with leaky Paywall.

So native flipbooks for WordPress, look it up. Real 3D.

Yep. Yeah, if you, if you have to go down that route, it's definitely a good solution to the setup.

Yeah, well, it keeps it all on your URL. So if I open it up, I'm still on the Morgan messenger site. Yeah, Yeah, I think that's a big plus.

Yeah.

Okay, so let's, let's. I'm gonna, I'm just going through my list here.

Let's do it.

The other thing that you have set up to help like you. You removed the double opt in. Is that, is that right? And you installed IP blocker.

That's right.

Okay, so what does that do?

So IP blocker, instead of using cookies, like traditional meters are all cookie based, which we all know if you're in the publishing space that you can clear your cookies or go incognito and essentially reset the count forever and always and just keep, keep looping around with free content.

Right.

So what IP blocker does, instead of tracking cookies, it's tracking the IP address. So you go to an article, you maybe get one free article, and then you trigger the subscribe nag. You can't clear your cookies, you can't go incognito. You can't even go to a different computer on the same network with the same IP address to reset the camera. There's no resetting this.

Right.

Unless you go into a different IP address or a different, like maybe a data plan on a, on a, on a cell tower with a different IP address. In other words, it makes it, it tightens the ship a bit more and it, it requires your readers to sign up for free, at least to continue reading. And so I prefer that method. I think a lot of publishers, I think about this, this functionality, the IP blocker, it's one of those things where I don't think we talk about it enough, but I think it's one of the, one of the. And it's probably, I think Jeremy said he created this thing super quick. It wasn't like, from a, from a technical coding perspective, it was fairly.

Version one. Right.

Version one was fairly quick to develop.

Yeah.

And it has Huge implications because now people can't just clear their cookies and continue on, you know, this, this journey. And they have to have to at least sign up for free to continue reading. And I prefer that over the double opt in. They're a little bit different, but I prefer that versus people signing up through double opt in and having to click a link and then go back to your site. There's a lot of friction involved in that and I just don't want the end user to experience any kind of struggle in this like early, early funnel phase. I want them to just sign up and it's like, oh, this is great. I have access to this article. This is fantastic. There's another article I'd like to check out. Boom. Now I'm hit with the, you know, with the sign up for or the subscribe.

I agree. I think IP restricting works hand in hand with the free registration beautifully. Because yeah, you know, you're still, you still have a metered paywall. You're still letting the first article be chosen, any article, and then the meter gets used and then, you know, you, I try to go incognito. Oh no, I still get the message that says, you know, register for free and then use. The publisher can decide how many more free articles you want to give. Of course, we'll recommend one.

I like, I like the one in one strategy. The one free for all and the one free for the, for the free registration. I mean it is kind of a tight meter, but for my clients, they're all legacy, usually local newspapers with brands that usually date back. I mean, in this case they probably date back to the early 1800s. I mean it's been around forever. So having that, that, that brand awareness allows you to sort of tighten up the ship. Now if you're brand new to the market, maybe you want to be a bit more generous with what you give away for free on both ends. But, but by and large, if you're not sure one and one is a good, a good strategy.

Yep. For, for sure.

Yeah.

You can always tighten, you know, talking to publishers, especially when they're going to digital subs for the first time, they feel like they want to be generous. So they'll do may, they may restrict one free article or two and they may offer, you know, two or three free articles per month. And then at some point, pretty quickly they're realizing that they need to get more free registrations into the, into the loop. Start typing and you can do that. It just sort of pushes out the effectiveness. Yeah, free registrations.

Yeah. And there's a lot of value and like I know a lot of publishers, sometimes, especially legacy publishers, are hesitant to turn on a free registration, but there's a lot of value in having those free registration signups, regardless of whether or not they ever convert to paid. They're on your newsletter. If you're sending a newsletter, hopefully you're sending a newsletter. And for a local newspaper, these are local email addresses in the community. Like, this is a very targeted group of people in the community. And if I were an advertiser and you're sending out a newsletter, I would love to be in that newsletter and be able to land in the inbox of 5,000 people in my small community, versus having to advertise on Facebook or Google where you're sort of just shouting into the wind and you're not able to get into the inbox like that. That's a whole different discussion, a whole different podcast. But being able to target local inboxes, at least for me, that's like, that's like the premium ad space for, for local news publishers that you can't really get anywhere else right now.

Yeah, sure. I mean we. So here in New Hampshire, small market, I mean, 30 towns, 70,000 population, something like that. I can't remember the exact numbers. And one, one of our local publishers here, it was just a one one person operation or two person operation, 10,000 plus, you know, plus email addresses. So he's got one more than one seventh, let's put it that way, of the entire population on free registration. And then he's got a nice percentage of, of revenue coming from that group as well. Yeah, so it's, it's. Yes, he's got, he actually doubled his advertising in the newsletter a few months ago and nobody complained. He did it in a nice sponsored way and it's working really, really well for him. So, you know, he's grown his list. If you're a, if you're a local business and you want exposure, you're gonna instantly drop into, you know, over 10,000 email boxes in one shot.

Yeah.

And that just on one day or more days than one. Yeah, it's. What more could you want? You know, it's like you're just in a stream of a mess of content, you know?

Yeah, yeah. And there are newsletter ad networks, but nothing's going to let you target to this level. Yeah, you're not going to be able to target people in the community to that, to that degree. So I've, I've been telling publishers to lean into this, this is sort of a, something that differentiates them from the, the Google and the Facebook world of advertising. So finally something to cheer about.

Yeah, no, it works like crazy. You just have to, just have to do it. Spend the time and do it, do it. It will be one of the biggest, you know, revenue bumps. You know, getting your free registration right is the key to moving into paid subscriptions. Without a doubt.

Yeah. And if, and if newsletters seem daunting to you and you're like, oh my God, I can't, I don't. That's one more thing I have to do. Check out newsletter glue anytime we have a chance to plug. Leslie over at Newsletter Glue, Check it out. It makes it super easy. You don't even have to go into Mailchimp. You can just do it from the WordPress dashboard and just select the post you want fired out. I've got a number of publishers that use it and swear by it and so I would highly recommend it if automation. Yeah, yeah. Make your life easier. I mean, mailchimp is a, is a, is a monster in the, in the back end. And much like Google Analytics, it's just so complicated. So newsletter glue certainly takes the complications out of it. If, especially if, you know, WordPress, the newsletter glue will be second nature to you.

Yeah. It saves you time and at some point time is going to become so valuable, you'll need to save time.

Yeah.

Okay, so last thing I have, this is a good segue. We were talking about targeting on the newsletter. So last thing you want to look at is Taylor had mentioned when somebody registers after that first free article that they get actually taken back to the article they were reading and that article gets unlocked. That's something called registration redirect. And the targeting part is like, what? And you know, this is all part of this sort of seamless experience. You're carrying the reader back to the article, they're unlocked, they're logged in and it fires off the welcome email. Now they're free registered, you know, supporter or whatever. But from a targeting perspective is now you have, once somebody registers for free and you want to front load all these free registrations because you can target them right away. So you can have a nice little, little targeting message. We have a conditional display where you can have a very elegant little bar across the top or bottom of your website that says, hey, upgrade, upgrade for full access. Doesn't pop up. It doesn't get in the way of the experience. You can, you can close it and you can change the messaging on it, but just a Simple message that says, hey, upgrade. And then we have other targeting tools like Ad Dropper and now your newsletter. You now you have, now you have free registered, you know, readers that are tagged, you know, free and like, let's say mailchimp or whatever other email service you're using. So you can target the free group both on your website and via your newsletter, which, you know, when you can speak directly to a specific group, you know, it's, there's much more impact there. Somebody knows that they registered. You're giving the registered a specific offer or a nudge or whatever it is and they respond more to that. So you get to target your readers in this seamless experience. And with Tyler, I think Tyler's message today is you get to front load your free registrations. You just get more free registrations right off the bat and you're restricting the right way.

So yeah, yeah, that, that registration redirect functionality is. It's a simple piece of function, but it, it creates a very seamless and easy process for the free signup. And that's what you want. You want them at the very beginning to not feel like it's a hassle to be on your site and they sign up for free and then they're redirected back to the homepage and they can't find the article that they just found on social media because it's not on your homepage anywhere and they're lost. So making making the experience easy, I think leads to higher conversions overall, just making it a pleasurable experience to be on your site.

Easy wins.

Yeah.

All right, let me, let me go through the steps we just went through. And in summary, and you tell me if I got it right. How does that sound?

Sounds good.

Okay, so setting up a free registration, here's how you do it. Set up the meter to one free article per month and then, and then it triggers a free registration. You get one extra article and your upgrade message is moved forward. The. You want to restrict your. If you have E Editions, restrict your E Editions and set the message to upgrade only. So you have to pay to gain access to editions instead of IP blocker. That's something you just turn on. And it's one of my favorites.

You just turn it on, activate it.

Yep. And that keeps people from going incognito to getting, getting around your free registration and getting around your paid subscriptions.

Right.

And make sure you have, make sure you're metering your content with, with a true metered paywall. So you're the inbound reader can choose which article they want to read. You'll never, you'll never be good at choosing which are the, the, the right articles for each and every reader which has different needs.

Yeah, yeah.

And then set up registration. Registration redirect. So when somebody registers or pays and they're on an article, they get carried back to the article they were reading and they, and then they're, it's the nice experience where they can just read the article that they, that they registered for. And then you get to target because you have lots of free registered readers coming in now you can give them a conditional display that encourages them to upgrade and pay. Now you have a free list in your newsletter, mailchimp or whatever that you can, you can target there. And you can use our ad dropper for targeting on the website as well. And that. Those are the, the how. Those are the how to's. Did I miss anything?

That's it. That's it.

Okay. All right, so one last bonus thing. If you're still listening, one last thing. Okay. And this is some data. Now there's a publisher here that we're working with that has free registration set up just the way we spoke it. It's the, the meter is set to one free article per month. If somebody registers for free, they get.

One more article, period.

That end of story.

Then.

This has been running for quite some time now. I'm pulling just the last. If you, if you look at your leaky paywall insights, I'm just looking at.

The last three months.

And what you can do is you can see how many free registered readers they got in the last three months. So in this case, you got 798 free registered readers. And then how many converted to paid? 284 converted to paid. Now if you run the percentage on that, you're running what is it, 800 versus almost 300.

So what is that, 30%? That's 35, 36, something like that.

Of course, if you include gift subscriptions, that's, that's also considered paid subscriber. It's a little different, but okay. Over 30% of their free registrations have converted to paid subscriptions. I'm not going to say that's going to happen to you, the publisher, because every audience is different and every market's different. Yeah, but this is the success that they've had with, with, with the free registration and the paid subscription set up just the way we explained it in this episode. So hopefully that'll give you some motivation to get out there. Look at your free registrations look at your paid subscriptions. Are you getting 30%? Are you getting 5%? Yeah, right. Maybe it's going to be 5%. I mean, I look at some of the bigger papers in there and their data and they. Some of them are at 5%. 10%. 5 to 10 is pretty, pretty common. These guys are getting over 30. So I'd say that at the very least, it's time to do some testing.

And one one final thing. Look at the content that is converting people.

Right?

See what, See what's causing them to sign up for free. See what's leading them to sign up for paid. Figure that out. As someone who works in the local news space, I don't mean that you should adjust all of your content based on everything that's converting, but it'll give you a good idea on what kind of content is leading people to sign up.

That's right. I'm not showing the top content leading to conversion just to keep this private, but as soon as you set up your free registration, you can get a lot more data because it's going to tell you what articles are actually converting those free conversions. And you also, of course, get the paid conversion data.

A lot of good info there.

All right, let us know if you have any questions. We are here for you. Thanks, Tyler. Catch you later.

Take care.

Thanks for listening to the Paywall podcast. If you'd like to get in touch to discuss subscription Strategy, go to LeakyPaywall.com see you next time.

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