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Which free lessons bring the students who subscribe.

An online music teacher gives away lessons on video and sells a structured library, live one-to-one lessons, and sheet music or tabs. Tally ties each subscription and download to the visit behind it, so you can see which free lessons and songs bring paying students.

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01How they sell

  • SubscriptionMonthly or yearly access to a library of lessons and courses for an instrument, with new songs added each month.
  • One-offSheet music, tabs, backing tracks and single song lessons, plus packs of live one-to-one lessons.

02Payments it reads

  • StripeLibrary memberships through Stripe Checkout with renewals read, and live lesson packs sold as Payment Links.
  • Lemon SqueezySheet music and tab PDFs sold as Lemon Squeezy downloads, linked to the visit through checkout custom data.

What Tally can't read

  • Lesson apps sold through app stores aren't read; only your web checkout is.
  • Sheet music sold on marketplaces that take the payment isn't read.
  • YouTube's own revenue, from ads or channel memberships, isn't read.
  • Engaged time doesn't count a student who plays along without touching the page for 30 seconds, so lesson pages can read shorter than the practice was.

03Where buyers come from

  • YouTubeFree song lessons send students to the full version or the library through the description link, often weeks after they first watched.
  • SearchSearches for how to play a particular song land on song pages, which can lead straight to buying the tab.
  • InstagramShort clips of a riff send visitors through Instagram's in-app browser, named in Readable Direct.
  • EmailA weekly lesson email brings back students who already practise with you; UTM tags show each send's sign-ups.

04What Tally answers

  1. Do students subscribe after one lesson or after months of free videos?

    Path to purchase gives the median time and number of visits before the first payment, the share who buy on their first visit and a flow from first source to the one credited.

    Path to purchase

  2. Which song lessons bring subscribers?

    The page breakdown puts revenue beside each lesson page, so the songs that start subscriptions can be told from those that only draw views.

    Sources with revenue

  3. Do yearly members come from different places than monthly ones?

    Lifetime value gives each first source its customers, lifetime revenue, renewals and repeat rate, so channels that bring long-term students show it in their average.

    Lifetime value

  4. Do students use the tab download button on a lesson page?

    Heatmaps show clicks and scroll depth on a page, so you can see whether students reach the download, the next-lesson link or the upgrade box.

    Heatmaps

05Numbers worth watching

First-visit buyers
The share who buy on their first visit, higher for a single tab than for the library, and worth reading apart.
Renewals
Library renewals by first source, which show which students keep practising with you.
Revenue by source
Money per source, so YouTube, search and Instagram can be weighed by what their students paid.

06An example

Example

Path to purchase

Last 30 days · 105 of 124 new sales, the ones linked to a visitor

Median time to buy

3days

from their first visit

Median visits

3visits

the one they paid in included

Bought on the first visit

12%

13 of 105

Pages before buying

11

median pages viewed

Where buyers came from, and who closed the sale

105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.

50% of new sales were credited to the source that first brought the buyer in. Hover or focus a flow for its numbers.

  1. Googlecredited toGoogle26
  2. x.comcredited tox.com10
  3. Other (3 sources)credited toOther (3 sources)10
  4. Directcredited toOther (3 sources)9
  5. ChatGPTcredited toChatGPT9
  6. Other (3 sources)credited toNewsletter9
  7. Redditcredited toReddit8
  8. Googlecredited toNewsletter6

6 smaller flows in the table below.

Show the flows as a table
105 new sales: where each buyer first came from, and the source credited with the sale.
Brought them inCredited with the saleNew salesShare
GoogleGoogle2625%
x.comx.com1010%
Other (3 sources)Other (3 sources)1010%
DirectOther (3 sources)99%
ChatGPTChatGPT99%
Other (3 sources)Newsletter99%
RedditReddit88%
GoogleNewsletter66%
DirectGoogle55%
x.comGoogle55%
RedditGoogle33%
DirectReddit22%
ChatGPTGoogle22%
Other (3 sources)ChatGPT1<1%

Time from first visit to purchase

  1. 13Same visit: 13 sales (12%), bought in their first visit
  2. 13Same day: 13 sales (12%), a later visit, under 24 hours after the first
  3. 301–3 days: 30 sales (29%), 1 to 3 days after the first visit
  4. 194–7 days: 19 sales (18%), 4 to 7 days after the first visit
  5. 151–2 weeks: 15 sales (14%), 8 to 14 days after the first visit
  6. 102–4 weeks: 10 sales (10%), 15 to 28 days after the first visit
  7. 51–3 months: 5 sales (5%), 29 to 90 days after the first visit
  8. 03+ months: 0 sales (0%), 91 days or more after the first visit

Pages buyers saw before paying

Share of the 105 buyers who viewed each page before paying

  1. /pricing96%, 101 of 105 buyers
  2. /71%, 75 of 105 buyers
  3. /signup63%, 67 of 105 buyers
  4. /docs38%, 40 of 105 buyers
  5. /blog/stripe-fees26%, 28 of 105 buyers
  6. /compare21%, 23 of 105 buyers
  7. /changelog8%, 9 of 105 buyers
  8. /blog/launch-week5%, 6 of 105 buyers

Only new sales count here. Renewals and upgrades belong to the visit that won the subscription, so counting them would count that journey again.

Fig. 1Path to purchase on the example site. For a music teacher, check how many visits come before the first payment and which source started them.

07Setting up

  1. Any HTML sitePut the tag in the head of every page, including song pages and the membership page.
  2. StripePass the visitor's id in Checkout metadata and subscription_data, so library renewals keep the first payment's source.
  3. Tag each YouTube description link with utm_content for the song, so every free lesson shows its own revenue.

08Questions

  • Can Tally tell how long students practise?

    Not really. Engaged time counts while the tab is in view and someone moved in the last 30 seconds, so a student playing along with a video without touching the page stops counting.

  • I sell lesson packs for live lessons. Are those linked?

    Yes, when they're paid through your connected Stripe or Lemon Squeezy checkout from your site; each pack is a sale linked to the visit before it.

  • Does Tally track plays of my embedded videos?

    No. It counts the page visit and engaged time. You can send a goal from your player's own events with tally('video_play') if you want plays counted.

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