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Reevaluating Subscriber Breaks: Seeking Insights and Experiences

Avatar of Felipe C.Felipe C.
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Dear all, I have a strategic question for you regarding the "Subscriber Break." We’ve been using it for the past year, positioning it as approximately a 25% break in our content. If you wanted to read the full article on the web, you had to subscribe. The goal of gating content was to maximize subscriber conversions, somewhat ignoring those who simply read on the web. Now, I’m questioning whether that’s still the right approach, and I'm considering removing all subscriber breaks. Here’s my new hypothesis:

  • Content will rank better, since search engines and LLMs can read the full text.

  • I can better leverage social media to drive traffic to full posts that deliver the complete insight.

  • Users will have a stronger "WOW" experience by reading everything before being asked to sign up.

  • It will fix the awkward "you must log in to read online" experience for current subscribers on beehiiv.

I’m curious: have any of you made a similar change? What results did you see? Also, if you have any experience or insights to share, I’d love to hear them. Cheers!

1 comment

  • Avatar of Janko R.
    Janko R.
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    I don't have good data on this, so take it with a grain of salt ... I tend to have posts available in their entirety because I know from my own behavior that skip many of the pubs that ask me to sign up for every single article. However, I do add the break when a post becomes very popular on the web, which usually results in a significant increase in sign-ups.

    🐝2