well, the trick is to define your free/paid split, we relly like them to sign up, so we really want to tease them into doing that, needs to be fast and easy, if they try and back out of it, then hit em with guns blazing, cookies for the various steps of sign up or that represent specific actions you want to key on work. You can then read those cookies in other places to see if they have "gone backwards" or they didn't finish a signup. I'd rather get a 10$ first membership and recur at 20 than nothing and I can always recur at the normal price, t tht point I could make their first period 5$, who cares. I make the money on the recur.
everything they see and touch is controllable, the amount of free content, how many clicks, sections, thumbails or large pics, everything. We decide on a site by site or even page by page basis. At some point you need to group things or you can go insane with the granularity. We split the content too, makes for less accidents our free stuff is on the free side, the paid stuff is under lock and key. Doesn't mean people can't steal it but they pay to do so.
For the free side it all comes down to configuration of the site, settings for all sorts of thresholds and when they try to go farther, pay. Then you can offer varying levels, down to trial size, real cheap. From the members section we just check on every click what people have access too and of they don't we offer them various ways to get that instantly, no waiting. We also don't give everything away, we stage it, people like updates, daily/weekly something needs to be in their email. Bit by bit, dole it out and they're happy. We break down our content in different ways and feed out pieces here and there. We also log everything, and we do something with the data, push things people like and kill what they don't
obviously the type of content maters but voraciousness for the updates surprised me, which showed me how having useless updates could really hurt or an email that offers garbage info or is put together in a way that the user doesn't find valuable. Finding out how they want that email is important.
facebook proves one thing, people want tons of bullshit useless info, it makes them feel informed, they also want control of that bullshit because it makes them feel powerful
so herd em like sheep and let them feel like the shepherd and you're good
early morning 2 cents
