Pete Ericson walks through Leaky Paywall, a meter-based WordPress paywall that tracks free articles and prompts readers to subscribe. The demo shows three subscription options (free newsletter, digital-only, print+digital), login for existing print subscribers, gift subscriptions with redemption codes, and how subscriber data syncs to Mailchimp and SimpleCirc.
Chapters
Hi, I'm Pete from Zine 101 and today I'm going to show you how the Leaky Paywall and Simple Circ software work together to provide a seamless subscription experience. Now, I'm here on the santafayan.com and what we're going to do is pretend that we are a new user or a new visitor that has landed on the site and wants to read some articles. Now, Leaky Paywall is a metered paywall at heart for WordPress. And what it does is it lets you set up a few articles for free that you want to provide before the subscription prompt is displayed. Leaky Paywall makes sure that Google can index all the articles on your website so that they rank properly in search. And also that every article can be shared in social media with thousands of different browsers. And the meter only starts to count as soon as the individual browser starts looking at other articles. So in this case, the Santa Fe and has set up three free articles before the subscription prompt arrives. So let's take a look. I'm going to read the first featured article, hop into community here and we'll read another article and you see that whoops category of articles and we get a full article here with some cats. Of course. We have now hit my third free article onto the fourth and we've gotten the prompt to subscribe. So what do we have here? In this case, we have three choices. Now, you as the publisher can set this subscription prompt to really be anything you want. It's simple, simply an HTML box in the back end of Leaky Paywall. But we have three options. We have join our newsletter for free, and that lets you unlock five free articles each month. So that's very compelling. You can become a print digital subscriber or become a digital only subscriber. Now, the first step in the audience journey is typically an email registration. And if I click on this, I'm taken to a simple registration form where I'm going to get my 5 free articles per month. And all I have to do is fill in a little bit of information and subscribe. Now, as soon as I do that, I get taken back to the article I was reading and it unlocks that article automatically. One very important thing to remember is that in the digital marketing arena, you want to start a relationship with a new subscriber, really with capturing an email address. And that's what this registration or free registration walls they call it. Duz. So that is option number one. Option number two is I could become a digital subscriber or a print in digital. So if I hop into becoming a digital subscriber, I'm provided with the similar registration form where I fill out my information as a step one, and then I'll hit next and go to the payment as a step two. Now, if I'm already registered because I signed up for free, maybe at some time ago these fields would be filled out and all I have to do is head over to the payment side and complete that. If I'm going to sign up for a print and digital subscription, then of course I am asked to provide shipping information essentially. So here come the address details and then I'll head off and pay. Now, in either of this case, these forms are tied into mailchimp. And so as soon as I register or sign up for a subscription level, my email address goes off to mailchimp. And now you have that email address that you can send future content to. And on that free registration level. The idea here is that let's say you're emailing every daily or weekly or monthly. Well, you're sending that new free subscriber back to your website, they're reading more content, and they're hitting the next prompt which does require them to pay to subscribe for full access. The other thing to note is that this is all handled on your site. The leaky paywall is connected to SimpleCerc via APIs, and it's very invisible to the subscriber. So as soon as I fill out this information, whether it's a free subscriber or a paid subscriber, the APIs will carry the data into SimpleCirc and SimpleCirc will remain as your source of truth for subscriber information. Okay, now let's talk a little bit about how to log in for access. Let's say I am a print subscriber, but I don't have an email address. So I'm in the system with an account number and I want to gain access. All right, well, how does that happen? I'm going to head over to the subscription cards that are here, and there's a note here that says, are you already a magazine subscriber who needs online access? Click here. So I'm going to do that. I'm going to click here. So once I enter my subscription number and my zip code off the mailing label, I I hit submit. I'll be taken through a registration process where I do provide my email address, and then as soon as I complete that, I have access to the digital publication. The second way to login is Simply to go to the login. In this case, pop up. Or it could be a login page with some instructions on it. And all I have to do is put in my email address and choose any password I want. And as soon as I hit login, I. I'm already logged into the system and I have access. So the APIs do all the work in the back end. The subscriber has a very transparent experience. They stay on your site, they never leave your site to go anywhere, and it all works in the background. Now let's take a look at gift subscriptions. If you want to offer gift subscriptions, you can do so. And here's how it works. Click here, fill out your information, choose the plan that you want to give as the donor, and put in the receiver's address. Now, you can also use a coupon code if you can, provide a coupon code to your gifters, if you like, for running a special. And the donor can also send a gift message, which is nice. And this gift message message can be delayed. So when do you want them to receive this message? So I can choose? Okay, well, I really, you know, let's say we're sending this for Christmas. We can have this gift message show up on the 25th or the 24th simply by choosing that date. And you know that the secrecy of the gift will be preserved, and then you check out, and that's how that works. Coupon codes also work as well. And if a subscriber has a coupon, they can simply click, have a coupon, put in the code, apply the coupon, and then it'll change the price and off they go. I forgot to mention, gift subscriptions are driven through a code. If I click here and I'm the receiver of the gift, I will get a redemption code, and I simply put it in here, redeem it, register on the site, and then that gift has been redeemed and the new subscriber has been added to the system. So that's how the leaky paywall and simplecirc integration works.
