Pete Ericson demos Leaky Paywall, a metered paywall for WordPress that lets readers view a set number of free articles before hitting a paywall. Unlike hard paywalls, it keeps articles visible to Google and social media while still pushing people toward subscriptions.
If you're going to sign up paid subscriptions today in WordPress, then we're going to solve a big problem for you. The challenge today is that your articles must attract visitors from Google Search and be shareable in social media. Today's typical paywall or membership software simply doesn't do this because you have to decide which articles are free and which articles are paid. All your paid articles get blocked from Google Search and all your paid articles can't be shared socially. This as a result, doesn't give the reader a choice as to what they want to read on your site. Okay, so what's the solution? We call it the leaky paywall for WordPress or the metered paywall. This was originally pioneered by the New York Times. Essentially what it does is it gives the reader the ability to read x number of articles in a time period for free and then prompts the reader to subscribe. It also lets articles get found in Google Search and be shared in social media. Readers can sample what they want and if they like what they see, they'll share it. It's easy to configure as well. All you have to do is decide how many articles or blog posts you want readers to read for free over a certain time frame. So you can share one free article per day. You can let readers read 10 free articles per week, 20 free articles per month. You decide. You can also set up one time access fee, or you can set up recurring subscriptions. The leaky paywall for WordPress also uses a secure passwordless signup process, which makes it super easy to subscribe and guarantees that your readers will never lose a password. So what can you sign up people for? Well, your WordPress blog posts, your WordPress pages, and if you're a magazine or news publisher, you can use the ISSU M plugin to sell issues.
Let's take a look at how the leaky paywall for WordPress works. After viewing your last free article, you'll get a prompt to subscribe. The leaky paywall for WordPress uses a secure passwordless signup process. Once you drop your email address in there, you'll fish it out of your email box and click to login. After that, you'll pay. You'll enter your payment information, select subscribe, and you're done.
Now you're logged in as a subscriber and have access to all articles and blog posts in the publication.
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