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Communities and memberships

For membership sites: which free pages bring members, and what they read once inside.

A membership site gates articles, videos or downloads behind a monthly or yearly plan, usually run by a plugin on the site that charges through Stripe. Tally ties each membership to the visit behind it and compares what members and visitors read, so you can see which free pages sell the gated ones.

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01How they sell

  • SubscriptionMonthly and yearly plans, sometimes with a cheaper tier for part of the library, renewing until the member cancels.
  • FreemiumA free registered tier that unlocks a few items, so the sign-up is the first step and the upgrade the second.
  • One-offLifetime memberships and single paid downloads beside the plans.

02Payments it reads

  • StripeWordPress membership plugins such as MemberPress or Paid Memberships Pro charge through the site's own Stripe account, so those memberships and renewals are read.
  • Lemon SqueezySites that sell plans through Lemon Squeezy checkout links and unlock access by webhook have orders and renewals read.

What Tally can't read

  • Members who pay through a plugin's PayPal option aren't read; only the Stripe ones are.
  • Memberships run on Patreon or a hosted membership platform's own checkout aren't read.
  • A plugin that creates its own Stripe subscriptions doesn't pass the visitor's id, so those memberships link by email at best.

03Where buyers come from

  • SearchFree articles found by search are the front door; the page breakdown shows which ones lead to members.
  • EmailFree registered members get emails that bring them back to upgrade; tagged links show which send did it.
  • PinterestFor craft, recipe and hobby memberships, pins send visitors to free items who sign up long before paying.
  • YouTubeFree videos that tease the members-only version send viewers who have already seen the quality.

04What Tally answers

  1. What do members read compared with visitors?

    What they read compares engaged time and scroll depth per page for buyers and everyone else, so the free pages members read closely before joining stand out.

    What they read

  2. Why do our plugin's memberships have no source?

    Coverage gives each reason a sale isn't linked. A plugin's Stripe subscription carries no visitor id, so it can only link by email; calling identify when a member registers or logs in is how they link.

    Coverage

  3. Does the free tier lead to paid plans?

    Count the free registration as a goal and the goals view gives completions, conversion and the revenue of those visitors once they upgrade.

    Goals and funnels

  4. Which source brings members who renew?

    Lifetime value gives each first source its members, lifetime revenue, renewals and repeat rate.

    Lifetime value

05Numbers worth watching

Coverage
The share of membership revenue linked to a visitor; with a plugin it depends on calling identify at registration.
Renewals
Renewals by first source, the core of a membership's income.
Engaged time
Active time per page for members and others, which shows what the gated library is worth to those who pay.
Goal conversion
Free registrations over visitors, by source and page.

06An example

Example

Reading time

38s

median per pageview

Scroll depth

59%

average depth, of 27,219 views measured

Read to the end

27%

of measured views reached 90% or more

What they read

29,268 pageviews · last 30 days

Open a page to see how far down people read it, and how buyers read it before paying.

  2. /pricing5,527 views78% scrolled on average58s reading time, median

    58s

    reading time, median per view

    78%

    scrolled, on average

    5,527 views · 5,195 with a measured depth

    How far down they read

    Share of measured views that scrolled at least this far

    1. 25% — reached a quarter of the page:95%
    2. 50% — reached half of the page:84%
    3. 75% — reached three quarters of the page:69%
    4. 90%+ — reached the end of the page:48%

    Buyers before paying vs didn't buy

    • Buyers, before paying149 views · 107 buyers96% scrolled on average,1m 41s reading time, median
    • Didn't buy5,343 views · 3,816 visitors61% scrolled on average,44s reading time, median

    35 views by buyers after paying are left out of both.

    Buyers are visitors whose first sale came after viewing this page; only their views before that payment count.

Reading time runs only while the tab is visible and the visitor is active; it's the median per view. A view with no engagement report counts as 0s of reading. Its scroll depth is unknown, so it's left out of every scroll figure rather than counted as 0%. 27,219 of 29,268 pageviews have a measured depth.

Fig. 1What they read on the example site. For a membership site, compare buyers' engaged time on free pages with everyone else's to find the pages that sell the membership.

07Setting up

  1. WordPressAdd the tag through the theme's header or a header-scripts plugin so free and gated pages both carry it.
  2. Add a line to your theme that calls tally('identify', { email }) for the logged-in member, so the plugin's Stripe subscriptions link by email.
  3. StripeConnect the Stripe account the plugin uses with a restricted key; the plugin keeps working as before.

08Questions

  • Does Tally work with my WordPress membership plugin?

    If the plugin charges through your own Stripe account, yes: its payments are read as Stripe payments. They link by email at best, so call identify for logged-in members.

  • Will gated pages be counted for logged-in members?

    Yes, every page with the tag counts, gated or not, so members' reading is compared with visitors'.

  • A member upgrades from monthly to yearly. Is that a new sale?

    The yearly payment is read like any other, and if it's on the same subscription it keeps the first payment's link.

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