The Interledger Community 🌱: Sarah Pappalardo

Reductress "Members Only" Section — Grant Report #20210239

Sarah Pappalardo — Fri, 14 Jan 2022 17:29:36 +0000

Project Update

Whew, what a project! We're so excited to fully launch our new and ever-growing "Members Only" section, designed for our most devoted readers who join Coil and subscribe to Reductress to engage with our content in a totally new way. For nearly 8 years, readers have only been able to engage with our content based on what's most recent, specifically searched for, or what we share on social media. But we've created a section where our editors can curate content based on authors, tags, and even exclusive content just for our subscribers, with the ability to upvote/downvote headlines so that you'll see our most popular stuff, as well as our deep cuts. This, to us, is just a jumping off point for a larger, bigger experience for our fans, and we're so excited to finally get it out into the world.

And it's worth mentioning at the top that a small extension on the project allowed us to align our design, dev, and marketing plans for a much stronger launch. So thanks, GFTW!

BIG WINS: On the technical side - I'm really proud of my team, especially our lead dev, Jibran! We hit very few roadblocks along the way (mainly bigger questions on how to get this in the hands of the most people possible while also being web-monetization-forward), and with a few UI updates, we now have a very cool and mobile-friendly experience that's simple and fun. While we strayed a bit from our original design, thanks to a small, agile team, we came out with a much stronger design. The core functionality remained the same, but will be wearing a much prettier outfit to the party now.

We also used the last month to make a design refresh that syncs better with our marketing/video design, and cleaned up our login/register forms to boot. Feeling great about that move since we had the time to do it!

2 BIG CHALLENGES: Can I sum it up in one word? COVID, babe! Our entire office got hit with Omicron in December, followed by our fearless dev, Jibran, in January, followed by our design + video team after that. Wow! This was not fun, nor good for productivity!

But on a more technical side, our biggest roadblock of all was the fact that web monetization is not supported in iOS - which is 90-95% of our readership. We didn't want to exclude all those users from our new features, so after some thought and sample user flows, we decided to only roadblock one page - the "register" page, which would allow users to sign up for Members Only after registering for Coil, but from there, they'd be able to access Members Only from any browser they like. Web monetization will still be in play for the folks who use the appropriate browsers, and hopefully in the future - our app. We determined this was the best solve for the constraints we were under. Our next goal from here would be to streamline that signup process for our users in order to get more of them on board.

Progress on objectives

We hit all our key objectives for launch! We have produced a special place for devoted users with the intention of moving away from our ad model and toward a web monetization/subscription model, with the ultimate goal of having users spend more time on the site by engaging with our content in a new way.

As for the things that have evolved - we originally wanted to make this new section easily shareable via social media, but social APIs make it difficult without users having to go directly to the post page like a normal reader would. Something we want to explore more (and perhaps wait for better APIs from our social media hubs) is easy, effortless sharing to Instagram and other social media directly from the main Members Only Page. We'll definitely explore this more in the future.

Now, we see if our new functionality will lead to our bigger goals - a successful business model, and users spending more time on the site.

We will learn a lot in the next six months!

Key activities

We successfully built the Members only section functionality with upvote/downvote abilities, and a way for users to register and login/logout. This was a team effort between Sarah (me) and Jibran in terms of design, product, and development.

We then successfully curated content for launch, teaming up with Damien and Kendra on editorial. Kendra unfortunately left for another position in the fall, but was integral to supporting development, QA and preproduction in the early stages of the project.

Lastly, we're now wrapping up a final promotional video with our partners at Hiker to present on our main promotional and sales page and to disseminate via social media. We slowed down the progress on that to make sure all our design and marketing was in sync, and to update them with final product. We're just waiting on the final version to be delivered any day now!

From there, we are planning on executing our full marketing campaign, drawing some conclusions from early launch, and planning our phase 2 from there. This may include building out a standalone app to house the new functionality and even more.

Communications and marketing

So far, we've been pretty hush-hush about the project until the video and final marketing design is complete. But once that's finalized, we plan to execute a full-scale marketing campaign to hit our subscriber goals for the following six months.

This includes:

finalizing a landing page explaining the product
launching new, exclusive content for members (with the help of our editorial staff)
several campaigns directed specifically toward our fan base to draw subscribers in with compelling content.
talking about it on our podcast!

The entirely of the grant-funded marketing budget was spent on the video and design aspects of this, while our own funds will be used for any paid advertising that may occur. Our first goal is organic advertising, but we will inevitably put some paid budget behind this as well - although the key goal here is really to engage our existing audience, so we're going to focus on that by taking up real estate on our own properties - site, podcast, etc.

What’s next?

Phase 2: We're going to use the next month or so to fully launch and advertise our product, and learn from our users about what they respond to the most. From there, we will start prioritizing phase 2. This may include - an app (so we can control web monetization better and also the user behavior), and more exclusive content that's more easily shareable.

From there, maybe we'll see you in the metaverse!

What community support would benefit your project?

If you're already subscribed to the Coil Comedy Bundle, check it out! It's the 'members only' link in our header on reductress.com.

Secondly, if anyone has had success leveraging an existing Wordpress site into an app, we'd love to know how it went for you.

Otherwise, thank you for supporting Reductress!

Additional comments

I think the future of web monetization is going to be huge, especially as we see how Web3 unfolds. We're all excited to see how the technology expands and becomes commonplace for the average, non-technical user out there!

Relevant links/resources (optional)

Members Only - if you are signed up for Coil, you should be able to register on Reductress and view Members Only. If you aren't signed up for Coil, why dontcha now?!!

Reductress Members Only Section — Grant Report #1

Sarah Pappalardo — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 20:30:17 +0000

Project Update

Members Only is a special section for Coil-enabled users where they can engage with our content in a way that regular readers can't - specially curated feeds of content based on featured authors and irreverent tags we've used on all our legacy content, to create a new way to engage with our content beyond just the newest-first stuff you'd find on our homepage. Users will be able to upvote/downvote content within a feed, so that the most upvoted content will display at the top of the feed. That way, popular posts from years ago can still be enjoyed by our new readers/members. here's how phase 1 is going so far:

Progress on objectives

I spent the first chunk of this project designing the Members Only section and a bit of user flow to log in and out of this section using Coil:

Desktop Version:

Mobile Version, collapsed state:

While building out this basic functionality has been more or less smooth (thank you, a few key WP plugins), we are still having some "fun" discussions around how folks on non coil-enabled browsers will get to interact with this content, so we are playing with a few user flows that will allow for the greatest possible availability to our readers who are still using mobile Safari (which is like, 80-90% of our readers).

Creating an app will be the ultimate solve for this, but that's coming down the road.

The other challenge we face is that, while it's easy for us to build functionality that would allow users to share these feeds on FB and Twitter, we really want to be able to do something similar for Instagram. Right now, it's Instagram that's getting in the way of that, so we may have to keep this to FB/TW for now.

Commenting is still part of phase 2, but as this project is progressing, we're seeing more value in leveraging this into an app before we add that feature (it will allow more people to join and access our primary features before we add more functionality).

We're still playing around with the subtleties of the design, but here's what we have so far if you wanna take a look - shoutout to Jibran for the fabulous dev work here:

https://newstaging.reductress.com/leaderboard/
user: sarah@plentynyc.com
pass: leaderboardshiz

Key activities

In the future, our editors will be able to update those featured author and tag columns with whatever we feel is in the zeitgeist (#SeasonalDepression anyone?). And while in our proposal we foresaw commenting as being part of phase 2, it's looking more likely that we're going to leverage this technology into an app first, so we can streamline the user experience first before adding more bells and whistles.

Communications and marketing

When we FULLY finish phase 1 (so close) and begin phase 2, that's when I will personally be turning my attention to the marketing phase of the operation - making a video and getting people to subscribe and join and play around in there. My film crew will be ready to go come November for that!

What’s next?

We are literally still finishing the look and feel and functionality of phase 1, and will turn to phase 2 and marketing soon!

What community support would benefit your project?

Hmm, I'm not sure yet, but I'm sure this will come soon!

Additional comments

This is really fun so far!

Relevant links/resources (optional)

Reductress Members Only Update #1: It's Really Happening!

Sarah Pappalardo — Tue, 28 Sep 2021 18:15:27 +0000

Hey Friends!

Time for a good ol' update and introduction from little old me: I'm Sarah Pappalardo, founder and editor of Reductress, a satirical women's magazine that has been around since 2013. As the rats have left the ship that is the "old advertising model", we've been exploring web monetization and the subscription model as a way to continue making content without relying on the perverse incentive of clicks = $$$. So, here we are, building out a little something we like to call: The Members Only Section, Phase 1.

We have a bunch of ideas for phase 2 and 3 for this section, which will be a fun hub to play around and interact with our content in cool ways, but here's how phase 1 is going so far:

Firstly: I may look like an editor, but I also spent many a day as a project manager and UI designer for mobile way back when, so I took it upon myself (ahem) to work on some comps for this project:

Desktop Version:

Mobile Version, collapsed state:

Users will be able to access this content via a login page (which is coil-enabled) - capturing login info will help us down the road when hopefully folks are able to comment on posts as well.

While building out this basic functionality has been more or less smooth (thank you, a few key WP plugins), we are still having some fun discussions around how folks on non coil-enabled browsers will get to interact with this content, so we are playing with a few user flows that will allow for the greatest possible availability to our readers who are still using mobile Safari (which is like, 80-90% of our readers).

Creating an app will be the ultimate solve for this, but that's coming down the road.

We're still playing around with the subtleties of the design, but here's what we have so far if you wanna take a look - shoutout to Jibran for the fabulous dev work here:

https://newstaging.reductress.com/leaderboard/
user: sarah@plentynyc.com
pass: leaderboardshiz

In the future, our editors will be able to update those featured author and tag columns with whatever we feel is in the zeitgeist (#SeasonalDepression anyone?). And while in our proposal we foresaw commenting as being part of phase 2, it's looking more likely that we're going to create an app first, so we can streamline the user experience first before adding more bells and whistles.

When we FULLY finish phase 1 (so close) and begin phase 2, that's when I will personally be turning my attention to the marketing phase of the operation - making a lil' video and getting people to subscribe and join and play around in there. My film crew will be ready to go come November for that!

Great Coil-enabled Apps?

Sarah Pappalardo — Thu, 13 May 2021 23:02:03 +0000

Hey everyone! Doing some preliminary research into building a web-monetized app, and wondering if anyone has any good examples of apps that utilize Coil?

Apologies for the noob post!