Update: The sale starting at $10.00 for the first 25 copies of the Subscribers Only plugin for WordPress is now live. Included as part of this sale only is a full developer (client/flipper) licence.
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When a visitor views a page or post with protected content on it then they’ll see something like this:-
In the screen shot above they can see the first section and the last sentence. In order for them to see the hidden content in the middle then they have to subscribe by following one the links. They’ll then see what they couldn’t see before:-
Is that cool or what?
It’s very easy to set up too, just a little bit of copy and paste.
THE most important thing we have to do as business owners is gather subscribers names and email addresses, and many of us have an autoresponder setup of some sort to help us with that.
An “out of the box” WP installation supports the idea of subscribers to your blog – let’s call them WP subscribers to differentiate them from autoresponder subscribers.
This plugin directly helps you to add more WP subscribers to your blogs. Once they’re there, then you can export and import into your autoresponder. (There’s more I want to talk about that quite soon too – it’s all change and there’s some exciting stuff coming your way.)
Anyway…
Getting WP subscribers can be a little bit of a problem for most people – you need to give visitors a real incentive to become WP subscribers, and many site owners aren’t sure of the best way to do this.
WP sort of helps you to do this by including an option where you can only allow people to leave a comment if they first register as a WP subscriber.
But all that seems to do is is stop people from leaving a comment altogether unless it’s really in their interest to do so. A lot of blog owners are using this to prevent spam, so it’s not really working as it was originally intended.
Now wouldn’t it be good if you had a method of getting people to subscribe in order to read your posts? Sort of like a WordPress Membership. But the only problem with that is somehow getting people enthusiastic enough to subscribe, especially if they can’t read ANYTHING until they do.
There’s no way of them sampling your articles first, and of course if everything is hidden behind a membership, then you lose all the nice SEO effects of having plenty of content on your site.
What you really need is a method of hiding some of the content so that people can read part of an article, get hooked in, and then only be able to read the juicy bits by first becoming a subscriber.
Aha!
This concept is DYNAMITE.
Imagine this.
You write a post or a page that explains how important it is to do something – the WHY – but then leave out the crucial bit that explains the method of doing it – the HOW.
All they see is a message saying something like “This content is for Subscribers Only”.
Get it?
The only way that people can read that missing content is if they follow the link and join as WP Subscribers, then once they’re logged in they can see all the hidden content.
Do you see the power of that?
Anybody that’s read the first half of an article will almost always want to read the second half. In fact you don’t even need to withold half the content, you can do it with just a paragraph as long as it has the information in that they want to know about.
And inquisitiveness is an incredibly powerful feeling – we all know the phrase “curiosity killed the cat”.
The entire human race is hard wired with curiosity built in. The Subscribers Only plugin taps into that curiosity and gets people to subscribe to your blog.
The sale for the Subscribers Only plugin goes live today, Sunday 8th September at 6.00pm GMT (1.00pm EST) and will run for 48 hours.
The first 25 copies are just $10 with a price increase after that so the faster you get in the lower the price you’ll pay.
-Frank Haywood
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I like the sound of this. One question – when you say that once they are WP subscribers, you can import them to your autoresponder, how does this work with the double opt-in aspect of Aweber? Hope that question makes sense.
Hi Karl,
You’d have to import them into a non-double opt in list. I’m going to be covering email and autoresponders over the next week as I think it’s time for a change for all of us. 🙄
-Frank
I am not sure from your screen shots how this works Frank….
When they get to read the SPECIFIC ‘hidden’ parts, when you actually created that text, formatting and images of it all -Within the usual page/ blog content area and then cut the pasted html into a box it seems on the right of your screen shot called subscribers….
I presume it duplicates all formatting of any sentences that were bold, colors images used etc?
In other words, just like reading a normal post or page with all elements and formatting in tack?
Hi Jenny,
Yes. 🙂
It really is just a matter of selecting the text you want only subscribers to see, and then copying and pasting it into the plugin field in the new block, and then pasting a shortcode where the text originally was. When someone tries to view the page then the content shows as you see in the screen shot – “Subscribers Only”. Once they subscribe then they can see all the hidden content as it was originally.
You can create as many of those locked blocks as you like on a page or post to really get them thinking about what they’re missing out on. 😉
-Frank
Frank you still didn’t actually answer and confirm as to my question regarding does it retain ALL formatting?
if you paste the text into the box of your plugin will it keep all the formatting (bold, colur text italic) etc you may have originally applied and have images you may have used be where you placed them all be showing up?
Jenny
Hi Jenny,
Yes. 🙂 You’re actually copying the HTML into the box, so it will still look exactly as it was before.
-Frank
After the visitor has subscribed, will locked content on all pages then be visible to them, or must the subscribe on each page separately?
Is there a method to keep it visible for them on their next visit, or must they subscribe again?
Hi Kevin,
Yes all content on all pages and posts will show. The plugin requires them to register as a WP subscriber and then log in to view the content, but once logged in they can browse the site freely and not see any hidden “Subscribers Only” messages. They wouldn’t know the content was locked at all.
The next time they arrive on your site, then WP may ask them to log in again depending on how long ago their last visit was. The usual WP cookie driven stuff we’re all used to. I don’t know about you, but I let FireFox and FF Sync keep all my browser passwords linked across the different machines I use so it’s never a problem for me remembering password. I *think* most people probably let their browsers remember their non-critical passwords.
-Frank
Hey Frank,
I like the sound of this plugin,however it is really hard to get people imported into Aweber.
How will they be useful if you can’t get them into your auto responder.
Warmly
Gail J Richardson
Hi Gail,
You *might* have read my last email an hour ago (depending on the timing) about a series of articles and videos I’m doing all about email. I’ll let you in on a bit that’s coming as part of all this as a “taster”. 🙄
The reason we all use services like Aweber, ImnicaMail, MailChimp, GetResponse etc is deliverability. I don’t use one over the other because of features or usability, my MAIN concern is deliverability with a lesser emphasis on usability. As long as I can type stuff, add links and send that’s about all I want from an autoresponder. (Oh, and create autoresponder sequences, and use open and click tracking but that’s about it.) Anything else for me is fluff.
How would you feel if if you thought you could get the same level of deliverability for 1% of the cost of an autoresponder service? And have total control over your lists with no rules about importing your customer and other lists?
I’ll be covering that in my email series all about email, so watch out for that! 😉
-Frank
I would love it Frank.
My autoresponder bills are outrageous.
I will be waiting for the details.
Warmly
Gail J Richardson
Hi Gail,
Mine too. We’ll start tomorrow with email as a user and then by the end of the week we’ll move onto autoresponders. 🙂
-Frank