Old Friends, Made New
We love introducing new products and ideas. But we also love tinkering with existing tools to make them even better.
This month, as the seasons turn and the year wears on, we focus our attention on improvements and enhancements to existing tools and partnerships and on making the most of tools we already have.
Meet your old friends, all over again.
Featured Update: IP Blocker
A unique tool, leveled up
The original IP Blocker
Our IP Blocker add-on to Leaky Paywall has always been a uniquely valuable tool. It stops visitors from switching to incognito browsing to get around the metered paywall.
As far as we’ve seen, it’s the only tool of its kind.
It works like this: A visitor comes to your site. IP Blocker stores their IP address. The visitor uses up the free article meter and, in an attempt to access more free content, they switch to a different browser.
IP Blocker recognizes their IP of origin and re-routes them back into the subscription funnel with a request to subscribe for further access. That’s the foundation.
The upgrade
That was the basic idea. But now we’ve boosted its performance to be, effectively, an enterprise level blocker.
The original version worked for small to mid-level publishers. But the process of caching the IP addresses for high-volume sites impeded site performance.
Now, instead of storing the addresses in a buffer, they get automatically transferred to a separate database, allowing you to keep your site running smoothly.
This also gives you the option of completely wiping the cache, if you want the opportunity to reset your meter for all visitors.
And now you have a database giving you an idea of how many blocks happen, giving you more insight into user behavior.
New Partner: Publisher’s Service Associates, Inc.
An existing partnership, enhanced
We added a PSA as a partner not long ago. They serve as a subscriber source-of-truth, partnering with Leaky Paywall as the gatekeeper for content access.
Thanks to this partnership, we’ve also added a few new functions:
- The transaction is handled on your site, rather than diverting to a PSA-hosted page, so any compatible payment gateways (including Authorize.net and Stripe) and Leaky Paywall add-ons are available.
- We’ve built a multi-subscription function. If a publisher is selling multiple products — different content, rather than different payment plans or formats — readers can now purchase parallel subscriptions. Check out Hilary Kramer, a market analysis publication, running on PSA and Leaky Paywall:
Learn more about the Leaky Paywall -PSA Integration.
Featured Publisher: Law Week Colorado
Law Week Colorado is a weekly issue publisher, focused on themed topics of law relevant to the state of Colorado and the nation as a whole.
In addition to their weekly issue, they also publish a running news feed and occasional special issues and they’ve compiled a substantial archive of back issues.
They recently relaunched their site to improve reader experience. Their issues are built in IssueM for a clean look, easy organization, search engine access, and the ability to quickly re-shuffle existing content into fresh issues.
Their issue archive is a particularly strong point.
Often publishers populate any archives with uploaded PDFs of old issues. Law Week Colorado has taken the time to go back and upload back issues as individual dynamic articles.
Not only does this improve reader experience generally, it also dramatically expands the search and social reach of the publication. Search engines can access and crawl live articles in a way they can’t with PDFs or flipbooks.
Recent Success Stories
How adding a free level is growing subscriptions for Small Boats Magazine
Small Boats Magazine has seen their email list increase by 20% each month since they added a free level.
This matters because your email list is 10x more likely to become paid subscribers.
How to use WooCommerce for digital subscriptions
Get an in-depth look at how the integration between Leaky Paywall and WooCommerce works, what it can do for you, and how Stone Soup Magazine is putting it to good use.
More tips and updates are always available on our site.
Until next time, be safe and be well!
Thanks,
Pete Ericson & Jeremy Green
