Add more value to your publication with subscriber only commenting

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Welcome to the Paywall podcast. I am here with Tyler from Paywall Project. Once again, we're gonna nerd out on how to, how to build subscription revenue. That is, that is the thing which keeps us going. And today is a really interesting one. This one's been around for a little while, seems to be making a comeback, and it's about adding value to your paid subscription by letting paid subscribers comment on your website. If you haven't thought about doing this, now is the time to think about doing it. It's super easy to set up. At least with Leaky Paywall it is. And you will give a. You'll provide a strong motivation to paid subscribers to comment, of course, but also to casual visitors to comment, because everyone wants to jump into the party. Right. So welcome, Tyler.

Thank you.

Thank you.

Should we, should we get into it?

Let's do it.

All right, well, this got, this whole thing got kicked off because of a new launch that we had. Upper east side, they're based up in the New York City area. Is that right?

That's right. The Upper east side. Upper east site. Dot com.

Right. That's right. Yep.

So they're based on that, on that specific region of New York City.

Yep. And it looks like. It looks like New York because then their branding is very New York. Either a breezy site. I, I've spent some time there. It definitely looks like it. And that's cool. And it's a great example, I think, of a, a very niche down local news publisher. And that's, that's the way to do it.

Right.

Yeah. Your audience.

Yeah, there's a lot of opportunity and, you know, finding a specific region, a specific subsection and focusing on it. And maybe there's not the potential to, to have 50,000 subscribers, you know, paying per month, but there's certainly enough revenue to be made from, from a specific region, especially like the Upper east side. Upper east side. Upper east side.

Yeah. Well, it's a high income area and yeah, you know, we won't share any numbers, but what you shared with me, it's, it's. They're doing okay.

Yeah. It's sustainable and it's. What's also interesting about it is that it's you can replicate this. You know, if he decided at some point Michael the, the guy that runs it decided he wanted to go into a different part of the city, he could spin this up and do the same thing and focus on that region and serve that audience.

Right?

Right.

Yep. I love it.

Digital first. Digital first.

Yep. Digital first. All right, so let's get back to commenting. Here we have a, we have a niched local news publisher putting out articles and yes. So we're looking at the screen here and we see 2 comments on this particular article.

Yeah.

So the way this, the way this, this is structured. So if you're considering commenting is that it shows you how many comments are on the article. This article says 2 comments and it, it displays the actual copy of the comment. But you cannot actually post a comment unless you're a paid subscriber.

That's right. So what you're looking at is a public facing non logged in view of, of this particular article. So you're, you're sort of like, oh, I can see some of the comments, but I can't participate in that discussion unless I'm, I'm logged in as a, as a subscriber.

Right. And so this is, this is one tactic to take. It works. Another tactic would be to show the number of comments on an article, but high. And I've seen this on other, other sites where you hide the actual comment content and you just provide a button that says you must be, you must be a subscriber to comment. So those are, those are, those are two models and I can, we can.

We can take that a little bit further and let me just click on his subscribe card page. He is actually, he's got tiered plans and depending on the plan that you, you purchase, you get commenting privileges. So if you go for their basic observer plan, you don't actually get to comment yet. You know, you could debate whether that's a good idea or not, but these are, these are features that can help you level up your, your subscribers from not just paying the, the minimum.

So yeah, so his, his strategy is, okay, so there's a sort of like this basic level where I just want access to the content and I, I'm going to support this publisher. So I'll just sign up as an observer for $69 per year, but then I may get a promotion that says, hey, if you want to, if you want to join and comment, you have to upgrade to ally for $99 per year. And that's the, that's the, the poll I Think what's important to realize here is that, is that they're using the commenting function as its own pull. Right? So if you look at the difference between the tiers, that's, that's the next level like you just mentioned, and that's the big. So you know, you have, you have somebody who's, who's really looking at the subscription funnel and saying, hey, let's, let's, let's level up, you know, and as you know, we talk about the free registration as a first step. We've talked about premium setting up an easy premium newsletter as a second step. And I encourage you to find that podcast if you haven't listened to it. And then here's, here's another premium only content. You have to, you have to be a paid subscriber on the right level to actually be able to participate in commenting. I think this is great. So I will make a comment though, because this is what we do here. And this particular subscription page, there are four options. Observer, Ally, backer, Benefactor. And as I mentioned earlier, I think, I think they should slim this down to three options. Just drop observer altogether and really focus on Ally. You have a $69 per year subscription versus a $99 per year. Yeah, there's a big difference there. But you're still under 100 bucks and you might as well get. And you want to build up your commenting momentum. So if the minimum includes commenting, you're going to get more comments and that's going to become a bigger reason to subscribe rather than splitting hairs here. Now on the, on the, on the flip side, you have benefactor at 1009. 99 per year. This is great. If you're listening to this and you're thinking, what should I add to my subscriptions? And I know, you know, we want to keep it simple. You definitely want to keep it simple. But to have a really expensive option for, you know, your true fans who can afford to support your publication. It works. It's a great idea.

Yeah. And I love the extra feature that you get if you are paying that $1,000 per year. There's a couple of things. One thing is, you know, concierge support and also a tote bag. And also the Upper east side wall of fame on the site. There's actually a page where they.

Oh, what's that?

Oh, yeah. So I, I just, I think it's new for, for this launch, but essentially someone purchases this, they'll end up on that, on that page on the site. It's kind of like, you know, buying A brick at a university or something. It's, you know. Yes, that's, that's what they're doing and I think it's clever. I think it's great. People, you know, if, if someone's super into, into what they're doing then yeah, why not?

Right. Yeah. Well and I'll add that the, there's, there's another benefit here. These subscription cards are a bit of a lesson in, in digital publishing I think other than the fact that they, he can slim them down to three. But like the ad suppression is another benefit of being a paid subscriber at a certain level. So observer you get ads. Ally at 99 a year you get ads. Backer at 200 a year you get limited ads so that the ads dial down and then benefactor you get no ads. Yeah so it's, Yeah. I think all the right pieces are here. The recipe is, is looking like the ingredients are looking good. The recipe I think could use a little adjusting but overall the, the. I think there's going to be some, some, some testing happening here and, but it's all going to be in a good direction. One thing I will make just jumping back to. Oh, sorry, I almost forgot. So the benefactor level, I, this is fresh. So last, so yesterday I was talking to a publisher, a news publisher and they also had a benefactor style setup and it was this publisher, good sized publisher, news publisher. They, they'd only been up with us for two weeks, I think maybe three weeks and they already had four benefactors by their highest level. So it, it and they were, I talked to them yesterday. They were really surprised, happily surprised that, that there were people out there who were willing to, you know, cough up a big chunk of money to support the mission.

Yeah, we go it goes back to like the initial reason that you have digital subscriptions is like mostly like when publishers do this, they're surprised that people are paying it. It's partly because they've just never had the ability.

Right.

Their audience has never been able to purchase subscriptions on their website in the past and now you're giving them that option for the first time and they can do it on their own. They can put their credit card in. So yeah, giving a plan 1,000, 5,000, $10,000 a year, whatever it is, just putting that option out there. Why not? What's the downside in doing that? You might have a few die hard fans that will pay that and want to support you and if you can give them a tote bag or put them on a wall of fame that's great. And it doesn't cost you anything, really. Just a small amount for a tote bag, you know.

Yeah. Or a cool hat or whatever.

Whatever. And you don't even have to do that, but, you know, why not? Why not?

Yeah, absolutely. All right, so one more. I got, I have one more comment on commenting.

Pointing on commenting.

So this, this publisher that I talked to yesterday, it's funny how things all sort of happen at once. They are also setting this up on their site. So paid subscribe, only paid subscribers can comment. But the way they're handling it is a little bit different in that they're going to only let certain articles be commented on. So instead of having all the articles be available for commenting, they're really going to choose the ones that they know are generally a little more. There's a little more debate underneath or around. And so, you know, they're. They know their content. That's. That's their expertise. You know, your, your content, that's your expertise. You probably know which articles are the ones that will generate the most, you know, angst, happiness, you know, reactions, whatever.

Whatever those articles are.

And then just. And focus on letting, letting the comments fly on those. I, this is a bit of an experiment, but I really like this because, you know, we only have so much time in the day and so much energy to do things, and commenting kind of falls in that bucket where you, you, you know, maybe you'll leave a comment on something if you feel so motivated. If everything's available, you know, you know, you'll sort of, you may, you may just sort of scattershot your comments. But if, if just a certain amount of articles are available, you, you might generate more comments per article so that you. And really sort of tighten that community because you're commenting is, is a little more laser focused. I don't know. I really don't know 100%, but I like the idea a lot.

Yeah, that's great. Yeah. I think Upper east site, they allow comments on the last, like most recent, maybe 14 stories or last 14 days worth of stories.

Okay.

That's actually a default function, I think, in WordPress. I suspect it's to cut down on spam. That's over the long term.

Yeah. Well, the big guys do that. I think, you know, the New York Times and others will pick a, pick a time frame.

Yeah. And one more thing just to add to all of this.

Yeah.

Facebook and Twitter have essentially become comment platforms. Like mostly. Right. People go there and they comment and they react and they lose their minds over Whatever they're looking at, this is actually bringing that to your site and giving you an option to monetize that conversation that would otherwise be happening on social. So. Right, you know, I know, I know a lot of publishers are hesitant to turn on comments because yes, there is, it can turn into a mess for sure. But I think in the long run you can, you can moderate, there's, there's ways to handle it. They've, they've actually got their own terms of service for commenting and if only paid subscribers are commenting, that's going to cut down on, I would imagine cut down on a lot of the spam and a lot of the, the hate fueled, you know, commenting that you're going to get on, on your site.

That is a powerful point, Tyler. I totally agree. You, somebody gives you a credit card for the privilege of not only getting your content but also being able to leave comments, they're going to behave a heck of a lot nicer than somebody who drops in a bogus email address and registers to comment. So yeah, to be clear, this is not for free registrations. This is for paid subscribers. You have to have coughed up a credit card. Your name's on that credit card, your bank account's on that credit card. It does, it does make people play nicely. Question I got yesterday to your point was how do we handle moderation? That was a big, that was a big question mark. And the reality is you can be a reactive moderator with this approach. If somebody complains and what I mean by that is you don't go in every day and moderate the comments. Now when you turn it on, you're probably going to want to see what people are doing. But very quickly you're going to see that people are going to behave on the whole pretty nicely. If somebody complains, go look at it and deal with it and you know, but yeah, people have their credit cards on there, they have their names on there, they, they are transparent about who they are on there. That's what makes the difference.

Yeah, I suspect in the long run too that if it doesn't already exist, there's probably going to be AI comment moderation plugins for WordPress at some point to help for better or for worse. I don't know if it's actually going to be helpful or not.

Oh boy.

I think that'll be something that, that we see for, for WordPress if it doesn't already exist.

That's actually a good point. It'll probably flag like, you know, like, like first level flagging. Right? Like something Looks maybe. And then it'll just be. Commenting will still be published and everything and it just be, you know, easier for publishers to manage.

Yeah. And there's probably already a ton of moderation plugins for WordPress that can help with this, that have figured out the best way to handle this stuff. I'm by no means, I'm by no means an attorney and know exactly how to, to do this without, you know, introducing liability to your publication.

Wasn't that Elon's original mission with Twitter or X.

Right.

Like that AI would essentially moderate everything. Right. Which, which you know, today you can't do. But no, I think that was his. Because he's, he's, he's so big on AI for full self driving and all that.

Yeah.

And he, he wants, he, you know, he's, he's building his fleet.

But we have to remember that AI is only as good as what we, what we give to it. So it's, you know, it's, it's not like a magic tool that's going to just solve all problems. We have to train it in a certain way to behave a certain way. So. Right. It's the classic input output, like that's the basis of all code. Right, so.

Exactly. Exactly. All right. Anything else on commenting? I think, I think this is a fabulous value add for, for you as a publisher. So just to wrap it up, something easy to do. If you need help with it, just get in touch. We have a document in our help in our Docs section. The website that we're currently looking at is Upper eastsite with a t dot com, so you can check that out and really cost you very little. Just turn it on. Only for paid subscribers. You'll, you'll probably end up with extremely little moderation. And you know, you can add that as a, as another reason to pay along with your premium newsletter, which I hope you're doing all right. Thanks, Tyler.

Thank you.

Off we go.

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.