Make an Issue Paid: Preview and Paywall
A paid issue has to sell itself to the people who can’t read it yet. Hide it completely and nobody knows what they’re missing. Show it all and there’s no reason to pay.
MailerHive shows a preview of each paid issue, then a paywall with your plans. Members read the whole issue on the same page, and the email draft goes only to the lists that paid for it.
Choose Who Can Read an Issue
In the issue’s Issue details box, set Who can read this issue:
- Everyone (Free) keeps the issue free.
- {Tier} and above makes it paid for that tier and every higher tier.
The Access column under Newsletter → All Issues shows each issue’s tier.
Control the Preview
The preview is everything before a More block. Add one where you want the paywall to start, after the paragraph that sells the rest.
Without a More block, MailerHive shows the first few blocks, 3 by default, as set by Preview length on the Paid tab. Imported issues without blocks show their first few paragraphs.
What Readers Without Access See
Below the preview, the paywall shows:
- a heading such as “This issue is for Paid subscribers”
- your plans intro from the Paid tab
- a plan card for the issue’s tier and each tier above it, with a button for each price
- Already a paid subscriber?, which opens a form to email a reading link and, for visitors who aren’t logged in, a link to sign in
Plan prices read the way they bill, such as “per month”, “per year”, “for 12 months” or “one time, no renewal”. Each plan button goes straight to FluentCart’s checkout for that price. The Free card never shows on a paywall.
A reader who is recognized but whose plan doesn’t cover the issue also sees which email they’re signed in with, so they know to upgrade instead of buying twice.
What Members See
Members read the full issue on the same page. MailerHive tells caching plugins not to cache that response. If a page cache still serves the locked version to a member, a small script fetches the full issue for them.
Editors and administrators always see the full issue.
Paid Issues Around the Site
- Archive and newsletter page: a lock badge with the tier name next to the title.
- RSS feed: the preview and a “Continue reading (for {Tier} subscribers)” link, for every reader, members included.
- Search, archives and excerpts: the preview only.
- REST API: the preview only, marked as protected.
- Reading time: counted from the preview, so it doesn’t reveal the full length.
- Search engines: structured data marks the issue as not free, which is how Google expects paywalled content to be labeled. Paid issues stay in your sitemap.
Email Drafts for Paid Issues
The draft for a paid issue goes to the lists of its tier and every tier above it. Your free lists are left out, so free readers never receive it.
If no tier list applies, MailerHive stops with “This issue has no MailerPress list to go to.” Give the tier a list on the Paid tab and create the draft again.
Paid Campaigns Written in MailerPress
When mirroring is on, a campaign sent from MailerPress only to tier lists is published as a paid issue, for the lowest tier whose list it reached. A campaign that also went to a free list is published free.
The “view in browser” link of a paid-only campaign never shows the full email publicly. It redirects to the issue page, publishing the issue first if the hourly sync hasn’t yet. If that’s not possible, it answers “This issue is for paid subscribers.”