E21: Fix these 12 things on your paywall now

Welcome to Paywall podcast episode number 21. I'm here with Tyler and today we're going to talk about a dozen things to do to fix your paywall. And these are things that we see every day when we're going and looking at magazine and news publications that are just going wrong. And these are easy fixes that we're going to talk about. So this will be a quick episode. And if you're running a paywall, just, just hear us out and maybe you'll find one or two things that you can fix very quickly on your website in order to bump your paid subscriptions, which is what it's all about. Tyler is the inspiration for this. He's the one who said, look, there's just so much stuff that's sort of low hanging fruit we can, we can help with. So, Tyler, I'm going to let you kick it off with the first example or two.

Sounds good. So let's talk about trials. One thing that I see oftentimes with news publishers is they're offering a trial. They're offering a paid trial, but they're offering a paid trial that is three months or let's say 99 cents. So a free trial is not a bad thing, but a trial that goes on for multiple months, especially a paid trial at 99 cents for three months, for me, it tells the reader that, hey, you know, our content is only worth 99 cents for three months. Right. A free trial is not a bad thing. You see it with Netflix, although I don't know if they're still running their free trial anymore. But a lot of, a lot of entertainment platforms do it. And if you're going to do a trial, I would recommend doing a free trial, do it for seven days and move on from there. And I kind of relate this to test driving a new car. You don't have to pay to test drive a car, but you certainly know the value of it after you drive it.

Yep. And you get a short, you get a short exposure.

Right. So you get to make a decision on whether or not what you're looking at is worth your money per month.

Yeah, absolutely.

Absolutely.

I will also add that if you're looking at a trial, in other words, hey, let's test things out. Consider a free registration if you don't have one set up, which really acts as a trial, as a way to test your content. So you set your allowable articles that you could read to maybe a few per month in order to grab that email address. And then over time, your newsletter drives that Reader back to your content so they see your, your paid messaging. We talk a lot about the free registration. It works. And it, it does really take the place of a, of a paid trial in many cases.

Yeah. Cool.

All right, let's go. Number two ads around checkout is the note I have.

Oh my God. Yeah. Well, if you've ever been to a local news site and they do have a paywall and you're checking out and you're going through that process, you're putting in your name, your email and all that information, your credit card. And around the side you see advertising all over the place on the header, on the sidebar. Maybe you get a pop up in the middle of checkout. Right. If you're going to have advertisement on your website, which most local newspapers do to some extent, make sure to turn it off on the checkout process. And even, even on the My Account page where users interact with their just. And it doesn't disrupt the process of them paying you money. And the last thing you want to do is someone gets to the checkout process and there's a pop up and they click on the pop up and now you've lost them and they're on their way to, you know, who knows where.

So I've experienced that myself. Going to checkout.

Yeah.

You're literally typing and all of a sudden the, your numbers don't go in the form any anymore because the pop out pop up is, you know, gets in the way and it's like, really? So then you gotta, you gotta close it and then figure out where you left off and go back to it and. Yeah, that might, just, might just send someone away and be like, oh, forget it.

Yeah, yeah. And one more thing too. If you're, if you're doing any kind of retargeting, if someone goes to your checkout process and they put in their email and maybe they don't, you know, complete the process or maybe they do, if they do complete the process, don't send them emails about, you know, trying to get them to sign up after they've already signed up. So make sure if you're doing any kind of fancy marketing as far as emails go, just make sure that you're not bombarding people even after they've subscribed.

Right, right, good point. Try not to annoy, simplify.

Yep, yep.

Keep the focus. All right, so that segues into our next one, number three, which is offering too many subscription options. This is something that the data supports very clearly, that the fewer options you offer, the higher chance Someone has of paying for subscription. So look at the New York Times. When it's right time to pay, they'll give you one offer, sometimes two, depending on how they're testing. But that's it, you know, lots of products, boy, they could shoot all sorts of different offers at you. But no, they've found that if, if they just offer one, one choice, they do better. So I'm looking at track and field news here, which is publishers we work with. And these subscription options were set up some time ago, but you could, if you take a look, there's monthly subscription, annual subscription, monthly premium archive, annual subscription, annual premium archive, which is print as well as digital annual subscription, print only track code, a whole different. Okay, how many did I just read off?

Yeah. Oh my gosh, there's more.

Yeah, yeah. Eight options, right? So you're, you're someone's wants to subscribe to you and they're looking at eight options. You know, it's like higher math. Like you're making them, you're making them think like what, what's right for me. So this. And we happen to know that their monthly subscriptions are cooking along very nicely. Their annual subscriptions are. They're, they're doing well with their subscriptions, but just simplifying would, would boost their current stream of subscriptions. And what's the answer? You know, sell one thing. If you can now know Track Coach is a whole different product. So that's, that's different. But sell a, sell a digital and annual subscription. Opt out of your print. If, if somebody doesn't want print or like what the New Yorker does, you know, two offer two subscriptions. One is digital only, one is print and digital price them the same. Don't make people do math, right? And, and let people just check out quickly, easily.

And the thing too is once you have them as a subscriber, you can always upsell later on if you have an archived plan, if you have these special additional subscription levels. So there's nothing stopping you. Maybe after a month or maybe somewhere within your subscription messaging, you could point them towards a more premium plan. It just doesn't have to be all up front. Make your decision. Here's 17 options.

I like that.

And go from there. I like that. There's no. Yeah, go ahead.

Well, I was just gonna say it's like the start of the relationship, right? Like you.

Right.

Maybe, you know, maybe there's a free registration and that's really the starting point. But then when you pay, it's like, okay, now I'm all in. Now I'm like, I'm gonna be a subscriber, but you can start that with, like, step one. And then like you just said, maybe. Maybe they want archive access and they'll. They'll upgrade to archive access. Maybe they want, you know, a different type of a print offer or they want to sign up for Track Coach, which is a different product. Yep, I agree, totally. Keep it simple. And it's, It's.

It's just a. It's a flow.

It's a funnel.

Right.

Step by step.

Yeah. Cool.

All right, next. All right, Tyler, I think you have this one collecting too much data on checkout. What does that mean?

Oh, yeah, yeah. So I'm a subscriber or about to be a subscriber. I've clicked on subscribe. I'm going throughout your checkout process and putting in my name, my email. And now I have to put in my. My address. And now I have to put in a zip code. And then I have to put where I found out about this. This newspaper. And then I have to put in. There's too many forms. Too many. Too many fields that have to be where data has to be inputted. And similar to the ads popping up, or not the ads popping up, but the subscription levels. Having too many subscription levels, I can turn people away. This can happen on checkout too. So I like to have virtually name email, put the credit card in, and move on. If you want to collect additional data, you can totally do that, but maybe do it after they check out. Maybe you have a link or mailchimp trigger that goes out. Maybe you have a form after checkout that people go to where you can collect additional data. It's just. It will prevent people from getting through the checkout process if you offer too much for them to do.

Yeah. Here's an example. So I hit the subscribe button on the website and I'm getting. You know what? If I'm choosing a digital only subscription, you don't need my address, right?

Yeah, exactly. I see that all the time. So a news publisher, they're only offering a digital option, perhaps. Or maybe they have a digital and a print option, but on that digital only plan, they're asking for the address. Like, why do you need a billing address? Why do you need a shipping address? Right. It's just way too much information. Make it fast, make it quick, get them on board, and if you want additional data later, ask for it.

Yeah, a lot of options here too.

All right, cool.

All right, so let's see what we have next pop up on registration page. That is the next one that sort of falls in line with the advert, the advertising one. I will, let's just, let's just talk about pop ups in general. Let me just have a look here and go to this one here. Okay, so this is the fisherman.com pop ups.

Pop ups seem like something from the late 90s.

Well, you know, I understand pop ups and, and, and we, you know, there's, there's ad revenue there. And then in this case, this is a subscription revenue which, which I think is good because this is a subscription, you know, based magazine. But what, what, what's happening here is, and you have to be really careful of is when I go to the homepage, I get the pop up right away. So I haven't even had a chance to browse anything and it just strikes me as a pop up so that, and then I have to close it. So at least delay your pop up by 15 or 30 seconds, right? If you're gonna, if you're gonna have let, let people warm up to your content before, before you do it. But in this case, after I go to the homepage, I go to an article, I get the same pop up again, right? And it, and it, it grays out the whole screen, it blocks it. I can't scroll, I can't do anything. I have to get rid of that pop up.

Right.

It's not even like I would pop it up in a corner, make it, make it a little more subtle so you don't, you don't have to close it. But the messages, the messaging is there and, and I go from article to article, I get the same pop up. You know, it's, it's insanity. So you know, ideally you delay your pop up, you put it in a corner. Maybe like mailchimp lets you do that real easy. You just, you know, slides up in the corner. It's pretty, it certainly captures attention, but it doesn't get in the way. And then, or set it to just show once and then go once you close it like you're done, right? It just goes away for 30 days or something like that.

Yeah, yeah, Pop ups are the worst. I mean, I get why they're, why they're doing this and why they're putting that pop up. What the goal is. The goal is to get people to obviously sign up and subscribe. But that's a huge ask right out of the gate to ask someone to purchase something. And maybe they've never been to your site before. Maybe they clicked on your site through a referral from someone else or from. From a social media platform. And now you're asking them right out of the gate. I need everything from you. I need your name, I need your address. I need your credit card. Please subscribe. Yeah, it's. It's a bit much. Yep, yep.

Gotta be careful, especially when you're. When you're going for subscription revenue. Okay, so the next. I'll take the. So the next two is having a default subscription message, which we'll take a look at here.

So.

And I'm gonna wrap. Wrapping it into. This is not promoting the benefits of subscribing. So this is Heisenberg Reports, financial publisher. And if you go to a couple articles, you get the prompt to subscribe. For some reason. We see this a lot. And this drives. I know, Tyler, this drives you crazy. It drives me totally insane that, you know, this is where the rubber hits the road and this is where you need to bring somebody in. Like, if, if you don't have a marketing, you know, sort of approach to things, bring someone else who does. Because when I come in here as a, As a visitor and it says subscriber login, well, okay, that's. First of all, it's a little stark. It's a little cold. I don't like. Okay, subscribe to what? Like, what am I subscribing to and why should I subscribe? And what's the benefit of subscribing? So this messaging here needs to be benefit oriented. Like, what do I get by subscribing? Or maybe it's a free registration. What do I get if I register for free here?

Yeah, it's certainly not clear that it's a, you know, a paid option or a free option.

Yeah, you can, yeah, you can't assume 100% that everybody knows what you're selling. Like, yeah, you know, we're, we're, We're. We live in a world now where we're so overstimulated and we're so busy, such little time now that you have to be absolutely blunt. Like, hit someone over the head with a bat, tell them what they're going to get and why they should do it, you know?

Yeah. And this is such a big problem that we see a lot, especially with new publishers who come on board. And it's to the point to where we've actually considered internally creating a button that you click. You know, if you're. If you're a news publisher, click this button and it'll change your wording. But ultimately, you know, Leaky paywall can't make that that messaging for you. It's something that has to come from the newspaper, from a local on the ground human being who can put that messaging together.

Yeah, well, you know, your audience and what the benefit, you know, how do you make your subscribers life better? That's the benefit and that's what you need to describe here. And you know, just to take it to that second step I mentioned earlier, if I hit subscribe, you should have a nice landing page that gives, gives the, that visitor the, the benefits of subscribing. So, and this is something we also see is, okay, you go to the subscribe page, sometimes you just get subscribe cards, right? And then, you know, you pick one and you don't like, hear like unlimited posts. Like, what is that? I don't know what that is. I know that it's unlimited articles. But the casual visitor doesn't know what a post is. So you have to be careful about your wording on your subscription cards and then, and then in your copy up top here, this is a chance for you to really expand on the benefits of why you're going to make the life of your reader better by paying you. And again, this is where the rubber hits the road. This is where people are making decisions. So if you want to boost your subscription revenues, you need to take a look at these two areas.

Yeah. And in this example, there's just a lot of text and it's tiny and it's overwhelming. So if you're, if you're, when you're putting together your, your subscribe card page, as we call it, just try to keep it short. Try to keep it simple. Tell people the benefits and then move on and let them, let them go from there.

Yeah, here's a, here's a good.

Yeah, you don't have to, you don't have to display your terms of service or your refund policy and all that stuff. And the top of your subscribe card page, you can do that with the terms of service link at the bottom. You can, you can. There's other ways to do that versus how that example is doing it.

Yeah, you got to get the, not.

To pick on Heisenberg, but I'm picking on Heisenberg.

He's not, he's not alone. Okay, so just, just quick here. This is smallboats monthly.com Fantastic example of how to sell digital subscriptions. You know, they have when you hit the subscribe page. So if I'm a cold visitor and I hit Subscribe, I get, you know, Two sections I get. One is, you know why, here's a nice intro from the editor. And then two, I get the benefits, you know how. And again, it's back to simplicity. It's one subscription plan which actually has the subscribe for me or give a gift, subscribe for someone else. But that's, that's it. It's a one, two punch. And then once I hit subscribe, I get taken off to the form. So this is a nice model, nice framework to follow. Okay, what's next? Confusing menu items. I think that one you want to talk about a little bit.

Yeah, yeah, I see this a lot too. Helping our leaky paywall customers, our pub care customers, when we're troubleshooting stuff, I'll notice that there is no menu for signing in, logging out and kind of dynamically changing that menu based on whether a person is logged in or logged out. So for example, there's a sign in option for the logged out people and then when they log in they see perhaps a my account link when they're logged in. And that's only for the logged in people. And then obviously having a logout option and stuff like that, that, that's, that's clear. So the last thing you want is for someone to subscribe and then they're kind of lost on how to manage their own account, how to log out, how to log in. So making that process as easy and as clear as possible is super important for retention.

So, so what you're telling me is like we're looking at the Herald Dispatch here is what they're what? And we're not logged in or anything. But what you're telling me is if I'm looking at their menu up here, I may not know how to actually log in.

Yeah, I see a My account. I see a My account option on their site. It's not exactly clear that that's where I sign in, but if I click on that my account on the Herald Dispatch, it's redirecting me to a different page in a different tab. Try not to do that if at all possible. Just, just simplify the process. Working on Herald Dispatch now, which is a paper here in West Virginia. Just, just keep it simple, make it easy for people. An easy sign in option, an easy logout option, an easy way to manage their account. And I think a perfect segue here is if someone is subscribed and maybe they don't enjoy your content, don't make them call you to cancel their account. Make that easy, make it a simple process, let them Cancel inside of their account and maybe they'll come back in the future. Maybe there's a reason that they need to unsubscribe right now. Maybe they're on vacation, or maybe they're just not following along right now. Maybe there's a budget concern. So let people cancel. They'll respect that. They'll respect you for letting them do that online without having to call. Because the last thing you want is for your newspaper to be the cable company and you have to call and sit around for an hour. Cancel your account. So don't. Don't do that. Yeah, it doesn't look good for the brand.

Yeah, well, look at. Look at, like, Netflix and Hulu and all, you know, streaming monthly providers, especially if you're selling a. A monthly recurring subscription. Let people cancel, and then they'll come, you know, they may come back in three months and say, okay, I'm ready for more dip in and dip out. And that's the world we live in. You know, I know personally, I'm, you know, oh, geez, when's the last time we used Hulu? Okay, well, maybe we'll just pause that for a second, you know.

Yeah, but it doesn't mean you're gone forever. Like, there's always the chance you come back. Maybe there's a new show on Hulu. Maybe, you know, and putting this in terms of a newspaper, maybe there's a specific article or some kind of series that you're running, and people are like, oh, my God, I want to read this. I need to resubscribe.

And they're still on your email list, right?

Right. They're still there. They're still on mailchimp, perhaps, depending on how you've got that set up. And you can continue sending them content, and if. If they want to pay for it, they'll have that option.

So you mentioned dynamic menu. If somebody, let's say I'm a publisher, how do I set up a. A dynamic menu? So it says, you know, like login, and then once I log in, it changes to my account.

All right, so for everyone using WordPress, there is a plugin called User Menus. I think that's the term. It's a free. Free plugin in the WordPress repo. Install that and you'll have additional options in your. In your menu area to adjust the text and the links and stuff like that based on whether or not the user is logged in or logged out. Right. It's super handy, super easy. And if you don't have it set up, I Would recommend doing that as soon as possible, especially if you've got paid subscribers coming in. That's cool.

And then like you can hide your subscribe button so that if someone's, someone's log.

Yeah, yeah, for sure. Yeah. That's, that's one thing that I do for a lot of publishers here in West Virginia. It's, you know, hide that subscribe button when they're logged in. You know, there's, they're already, they're already subscribed. You know, don't, don't beat them over the head. Right. With continuing to offer that, that paid option. Yep. And it just makes it easier. It's an easier experience for, for the subscriber.

All right, User menus.

Okay. User menus. Good. I believe that's it.

All right. Next thing on the list. Oh yeah, Emails, not delivering. What's that about?

Yeah, so we get this a lot through our support desk here at Leaky Paywall. So if someone subscribes and they're not getting your welcome, you know, thanks for subscribing to whatever publication or maybe they're not getting your password resets that, you know, when they, when they request a password reset through, through WordPress, we, if you're a Pub Care customer, we will set up what's called transactional email delivery, which is essentially a third party service that ensures that your emails get delivered to your users. And if you don't have that set up, you need it set up because simply relying on the web host to send transactional emails is not a good idea, especially when you're using shared web hosting because there's a lot of people on those IP addresses and those IPs can be banned from certain providers. So it's worth the time. Even if you're not a Pub Care customer, it's worth the time to look into a transactional email service. One that I love for WordPress is a system called Postmark. Postmark. I think they give you a certain number of emails free, but it's relatively inexpensive and it also gives you an activity log and you can see emails going in and people interacting with them and stuff like that. So. Nice. Highly recommend setting that up if you don't have it set up already.

Yeah, yeah. I think we, for Pup Care customers think we use mailgun and it works great too.

Yep. Yeah, they're all very similar. They all, they all work the same. It's the same, the same theory behind all this. Yeah.

If you don't set it up, then your web server is actually sending email and you get spam complaints, you could get blacklisted, which could take your entire website down. So there's. That, that, that's. That's a bit of a priority if you're not doing that.

Yeah.

All right, next up, something noted. Talk about too many social media icons. Okay, this is just a little pet peeve. It's not, it's not huge make or break, but we're looking at a maritime sports here. And this is, this is very typical of a lot of publisher articles. We're on an article, we have social media icons sitting above here page, big colors. And then we also have the same group of social media icons, in this case sitting below the article. And the idea, of course, is, hey, we want, we want our subscribers, our readers to share in social media, which is fine, but the data has been clear for years now that no matter how many buttons you put on an article, it does not improve social media sharing. And we have gotten to the point too, where we all share social media in our own way. We have, you know me, I just copy and paste a URL into Facebook or LinkedIn or wherever I'm going, right? That's just the way I do it. It's the way I've always done it. Some people use Twitter clients or dashboards to manage all their social media accounts. They're going to post through their system. The other downside of having all these icons on here is you can actually slow your website down if you're pulling in Facebook content. Let's say sometimes I see that with social sharing, it can affect your page speed, but at the very least, it doesn't impact sharing. And secondly, visually, you're drawing attention to these bright colors and these social icons when really you want the person to read the article without any sort of interruption.

The last thing you want to do is. This drives me crazy across the board. And Pete, you know how I feel about social media platforms and I think a lot of, of local news and news in general, how they feel about social media platforms. But having promoting Facebook and promoting Google or any other platform or Twitter on your website is not necessary. I see this. And even in local, like, for example, like a local contractor has, like follow us on Facebook, you know, you don't need that. You really don't need that. So I'll stop there.

Control your desktop, get the free registration going and build your own email list. Yeah, there's the value.

We could have an entire discussion about social media platforms and how that ecosystem affects stuff.

So the other thing, just to continue with ameritime is be careful about giving away too much free content with your meter. We see this a lot, especially early on when publishers jump on with, with paid subscriptions is there. And, you know, you're nervous about ticking off your audience. You know, oh, I'm going to start restricting things and I'm going to be nervous about that. And that's absolutely valid. And so most publishers start off with sort of a generous allotment of free articles. Maybe the meter is set to five free articles a month if you're a news publisher, maybe it's three if you're a magazine publisher. And at some point you realize, generally realize that you're being too generous and you're not triggering the stop or the subscription message enough, which really hurts your conversion rate. And you have valuable content. People are willing to pay for it. You just have to draw the line in the sand. And what I'll say a lot is back to the free registration is if you offer free registration, you offer value. Like, you'll get a few articles per month for that. But, well, now you're, you know, you're giving, you're giving your content away for free. Right. So that sort of solves that problem of I want to make sure I don't, you know, annoy people. Well, you know, you have to make a living and you have to, you have to. In your messaging, you need to emotionally appeal to your audience with that message, hey, we need your financial support. Like, we're not going to be around if we don't get it. So you get that message across, offer free registration. And it really, it really helps in, in a lot, a lot of ways. But we do see veteran publishers, we looked at small boats earlier. You know, it's one free article per month, and then if you register, you get one more free article, period. That's it. You know, it's super tight. Super, super. But they've been doing this for years and they figured out that, you know, hey, we have great content. We'll let you have a little extra for registering. But if you want full access, then you just need to pay. And it's working, Working for them.

Yeah, yeah. And I've worked with publishers who have traditionally given away free content on their sites, and then they're moving over to a paywall. And, you know, there's, there's, depending on how large the audience is, there can be a blowback that people do get upset. Oh, my gosh, I have to pay for this now. This used to be free. What is going on? But over time, with, with messaging and with providing valuable content that goes away. But it is hard because people aren't used to having to pay for news. It's been primarily ad driven for a hundred years or more. And, and now we're asking people for the very first time in many cases, hey, you need to pay for this, just like you pay for Netflix and Hulu and Disney plus and all of that stuff. So it takes time, but it will happen. People will do it and they'll see value in it. And one thing, one other, one other small thing that just came to my mind too is I work with the publisher here in Morgantown called the Dominion Post. And one thing, this is a really small anecdote, but putting, you know, the picture of the author on the article at the bottom, personalize it, connect with the audience. You know, we live in this community. Here's a photo of the lady or of the man or whoever wrote this article. Right. So connect in that way.

Part of that emotional connection for sure.

Right?

No, that's, that's. So we should add another bullet point here. Don't, don't ignore your authors. Right? Like, yeah, yeah, your authors. To connect with your audience. Yeah, yeah. You know, it's funny, look at like really more advanced subscription setups where you're upselling things. And the thing that's, that, that is working for some publishers is paying extra, like paying a premium to be able to outreach to authors. So, you know, you can, let's say if you pay, you might have a regular subscription, but if you pay a, for a premium plus subscription. Oh, now I can actually message like this author on this topic and get an answer. Maybe, maybe not.

Maybe it's.

Maybe there's a threshold for how many of the similar questions need to come through to an author. And there are different ways to set it up, but essentially you're letting your best subscribers connect with authors. So to your point. Yeah, I mean, do that. Just put the picture on to start with for sure. All right, do we want to talk about this last one?

Oh my gosh. Surprise me.

A percentage of your revenue.

Oh my gosh. This drives me absolutely nuts. And I see it a lot, especially with startup publications that are all digital. They go to a platform and I understand the reasoning behind it. You need to get started. It's expensive to build your own site and to install different softwares. And I totally understand the reasoning behind it. But just remember that if you start out with a SaaS type software as a service platform to grow your audience, remember that that audience essentially I don't know about. Legally, they belong to that platform. And so anytime you have a payment come through, most of the time those platforms will take 5%, sometimes 10% of every single transaction until the end of. And the last thing you want to do if you start getting traction and you're like, oh my gosh, you know, why am I giving up $500 a month when I don't have to do that? And migrating out can be complicated. So it's really important when you get started to find a way not to do that 10% or that 5% per month, if at all possible. Use leaky paywall. It's free. Our core plugin is free. Not to go on a marketing expedition here, but it doesn't cost a whole lot to set up a WordPress site, especially for super small digital startups. Give it a shot, see what happens, and then you can start paying for software as you need it. Versus giving up all your revenue. Until the end of time.

Yep, until the end of time. And there's a good segue for the end of the podcast.

There you go. There you go.

Yeah. All right, awesome. Well, hopefully you found these 12 plus things to not do helpful. If there's some. If there's a question you have, please send it into us. Infoen101.com will reach us. We'd love to answer it in the following podcast. And hey, we just like to hear from you. So Tyler, thanks for the chat. This is great.

Yeah, thank you guys.

Thanks for coming up with this whole idea. And until next time, happy publishing podcast. And hey, we just like to hear from you. So Tyler, thanks for the chat. This is great.

Yeah, thank you guys.

Thanks for coming up with this whole idea. And until next time, Happy publishing.