Communities and memberships
Which posts and invites bring members who stay.
A paid community sells belonging: a landing page, a monthly or yearly membership, and a lot of word of mouth. Tally ties each membership to the visit that brought the member and keeps renewals with it, so you can see which channels bring members who stay.
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01How they sell
- SubscriptionMonthly or yearly memberships, sometimes with cohorts that open a few times a year, so sales arrive in waves.
- One-offLifetime access sold once, or a paid workshop for members and outsiders alike.
02Payments it reads
- StripeMemberships sold through Stripe Checkout or Payment Links on your own site, with renewals and cancellations' refunds read.
- PolarDeveloper and open-source communities sell access through Polar subscriptions and checkout links.
- Lemon SqueezyMemberships sold as Lemon Squeezy subscriptions, linked through the checkout link's custom data.
What Tally can't read
- Memberships sold inside a hosted platform's own checkout, rather than one in your provider account, aren't read.
- Activity inside the community itself, such as posts and logins on another platform, isn't counted; only your site's visits are.
03Where buyers come from
- Member invitesMembers sharing a link in chats arrive as shared links in Readable Direct rather than a referrer, which is how word of mouth shows up.
- PodcastsA guest spot sends listeners who type the address; a UTM on the show-notes link makes them visible.
- YouTubeVideos send viewers who watch for weeks before joining, a long path to purchase.
- NewsletterThe founder's own list often closes the sale when a cohort opens.
04What Tally answers
How much of our growth is word of mouth?
Readable Direct reads visits with no referrer as typed, shared links, returns from checkout or in-app browsers, so links passed around in chats are counted apart from bookmarks.
Readable DirectWhich channel brings members who renew?
Lifetime value by first source gives each channel's members, their average revenue, renewals and repeat rate.
Lifetime valueWhen should a cohort open?
Peak hours lays out past sales by weekday and hour, so you can open the doors when your members have tended to buy.
Peak hoursDid the podcast launch work?
Every membership's receipt shows the visits behind it, so the members a podcast brought can be counted, not estimated.
Receipts
05Numbers worth watching
- Repeat rate
- The share of members who paid more than once, by first source: the clearest sign a channel brings members who stay.
- Conversion
- Paying visitors over all visitors during a cohort's open window, compared with the last one.
- Refunds and chargebacks
- Refunds by source, which catch a channel that over-promises what the community is.
06An example
Busiest on Mondays, 14:00–17:00
2.1× the visits of an average three hours. Post around Mon 13:00 to be there as they arrive.
Shades are each hour's average over the times this period holds it, so a weekday that comes round five times doesn't outshine one that comes round four. The totals beside and below are the period's actual sums, not averages.
07Setting up
- Any HTML siteAdd the tag to your landing and sign-up pages, wherever members choose a plan.
- StripePayment Links link on their own; for Checkout your code creates, pass the visitor's id in metadata and subscription_data.
- Use a UTM-tagged link in podcast show notes and video descriptions, so typed-in visits stop hiding their source.
08Questions
Can Tally see who is active in the community?
No. It counts visits to your site and the payments behind memberships; what members do inside the community happens elsewhere.
A member cancels and gets a refund. What happens?
The refund is counted against the membership it reverses and the source that earned it, so that channel's lifetime value goes down with it.
Do renewals keep the source when a cohort renews a year later?
Yes: a renewal takes the link of the membership's first payment, however long after the visit it comes.