Hello Erika! I thought I might chime in on (4) if it's helpful as a pretty consistent reader (but not yet activated paid member) and fan of your work.
1. I hope others don't get mad at me for saying this haha, but I actually already get a lot of value from your free content. Your free content actually already debugs a lot of my questions/issues.
I was a long time 3yr+ subscriber of Peter Yang before converting to paid. I remember he didn't activate monetization until he had ~50k+ subs, but when he did it was quite aggressive. It really impacted my free reader experience and 50%+ of content became paywalled. I guess it worked though (on me) that I eventually converted to paid.
Looking at his substack, his is like 5+ paid articles per 1 free article which seems to be the inverse of yours? Maybe this is an alternative strategy you can consider.
2. Related to #1 I don't think I see the value difference / significance between free and paid and I think you could actually be more aggressive in your upsell imho?
For ex, I always notice the "Upgrade to paid" buttons throughout your articles, but I've never known what the upgrade gets me or the cost. I actually did a lot of manual work right now to learn a. which is the pay gated content and b. how much is the upgrade price. TBH your monthly price was lower than I expected! Imho maybe you can be more explicit/aggressive in your upsell through your free content of *what value* they'll receive and for how much $.
3. Subscription fatigue. Not sure about others, but I currently have 4 creator subscriptions (1 was an accidental renewal...). I think subscription fatigue makes me a little choosey that I only upgrade to paid if there's a very explicit value I can't access with free only (e.g. based on my current subs this is either: extra content, specific knowledge not shared in free, OR content format (I wanted to listen to the content as a podcast while driving)).
Thank you for sharing your knowledge as always! 🙏 I'll upgrade to paid now haha.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment! I hate hate to paywall everything but I hear you loud and clear that (1) it's unclear what you get if you're paid and (2) I probably need to paywall a lot more if I want people to convert. Great points, thank you Kay!
Hello Erika! I thought I might chime in on (4) if it's helpful as a pretty consistent reader (but not yet activated paid member) and fan of your work.
1. I hope others don't get mad at me for saying this haha, but I actually already get a lot of value from your free content. Your free content actually already debugs a lot of my questions/issues.
I was a long time 3yr+ subscriber of Peter Yang before converting to paid. I remember he didn't activate monetization until he had ~50k+ subs, but when he did it was quite aggressive. It really impacted my free reader experience and 50%+ of content became paywalled. I guess it worked though (on me) that I eventually converted to paid.
Looking at his substack, his is like 5+ paid articles per 1 free article which seems to be the inverse of yours? Maybe this is an alternative strategy you can consider.
2. Related to #1 I don't think I see the value difference / significance between free and paid and I think you could actually be more aggressive in your upsell imho?
For ex, I always notice the "Upgrade to paid" buttons throughout your articles, but I've never known what the upgrade gets me or the cost. I actually did a lot of manual work right now to learn a. which is the pay gated content and b. how much is the upgrade price. TBH your monthly price was lower than I expected! Imho maybe you can be more explicit/aggressive in your upsell through your free content of *what value* they'll receive and for how much $.
3. Subscription fatigue. Not sure about others, but I currently have 4 creator subscriptions (1 was an accidental renewal...). I think subscription fatigue makes me a little choosey that I only upgrade to paid if there's a very explicit value I can't access with free only (e.g. based on my current subs this is either: extra content, specific knowledge not shared in free, OR content format (I wanted to listen to the content as a podcast while driving)).
Thank you for sharing your knowledge as always! 🙏 I'll upgrade to paid now haha.
Thanks for your thoughtful comment! I hate hate to paywall everything but I hear you loud and clear that (1) it's unclear what you get if you're paid and (2) I probably need to paywall a lot more if I want people to convert. Great points, thank you Kay!