What is Content Dripping? & How does it really work?

From my previous article on WordPress membership plugins, apart from the content dripping features, they have other key advanced tools too. Like how you can easily organize your membership content into levels, groups, etc.

The powerful drip content feature allows you to roll out content to users at regular intervals or upon completion of levels. In short, the content dripping feature allows you to show restricted content to members after a certain time. This is a very useful feature for selling online courses or learning materials.

But, before you install any membership plugin on your site, make sure that it’s compatible with your existing WordPress themes and plugins. By testing it on a local WordPress install. And if everything goes smoothly, then you can install the plugin on the production site.

When we talk of content dripping, it’s part and parcel of these membership plugins. And more often, they come with a lot of pricing page templates and other features to make your site look unique.

That’s why it’s important to take note of the important plugin features you’ll need on your site. Even before you figure out if they’re worth considering. So, what is content dripping? How does it even work?

What is Content Dripping?

In its basic form, content dripping means that you release content at regular intervals (like King’s mini-novels). And people have to keep coming back to get the next installment. It means you normally have to create a schedule of your content (a good example is how iThemes Exchange does it).

How is Content Dripping beneficial?

There are two reasons as to why you’d want to drip content. For instance, if you’re charging people monthly, and hope they’ll keep coming back. Then either you are on the hook to keep creating new amazing content or you’re going to want to drip existing content.

And as I’ve written about before, if you don’t create a constant stream of high-quality content, you’ll end up creating situations of incremental regret. And beyond the desire to have people come back, you also don’t want people to cheat you – and it’s a very real thing.

Keep your site fresh:

By letting members see some content now and the rest later, your site will appear fresh and exciting. And it gives you more time to produce new great resources for your members.

Drip-feed creates excitement for your members. Quality content is released slowly, at a steady rate. The trick is to find a balance of how much to produce and when to release it. Too much, too soon defeats the point. Too little, too slow creates boredom and could cause your members to forget about you.

Mitigate refund abuse:

From time to time, a member may sign up for your content, download/consume all of your available information, and immediately request a refund.

While this may not happen often, it, unfortunately, does appear from time to time. The drip-feed method greatly discourages this type of user from signing up. Every member that signs up has to maintain their membership. For at least as long as your drip-feed schedule if they want access to it all.

Reduce your refund rates:

In this case, you’re dealing with a member who is genuinely requesting a refund—it happens to all of us and is totally okay.

We’ve seen cases where a member signs up and immediately devour all or most of your content in a single sitting. A month goes by, maybe two, and the site fails to generate any new information. Subsequently, the member gets bored and requests a refund.

While a drip-feed schedule is not guaranteed protection from this situation, a steady stream of content makes your site seem like an active, engaging program. Helping to justify the subscription fee.

Getting Started with the Series: Drip-feed Add On for Paid Memberships Pro

If you’re charging people monthly, and hope they’ll keep coming back, then either you are on the hook to keep creating new amazing content or you’re going to want to drip existing content. And if you don’t create a constant stream of high-quality content, you’ll end up creating situations of incremental regret.

Beyond the desire to have people come back, you also don’t want people to cheat you – and it’s a very real thing. If a person registers for your content, signs in, downloads everything over the next couple of days, and then logs out and requests a refund, you’ll be pretty frustrated, right? Well, sad to say, it happens.

Content dripping releases content on a schedule so that people can’t log in and take everything in a single shot. But, there are 3 main things that you need to have in place. In order to start releasing content in a systematic way to your members, namely:

“Ready to go” Resources:

In order to set up a drip-feed series, you need to have content already written, rendered, or edited. If you are sending out blog posts, the articles need to be published and ready to be engaged with.

A Membership Plugin:

If you are looking to create a content drip schedule and are using Paid Memberships Pro, you can use a Drip-Feed Add On to set up your content drip schedule. It’s pretty straight forward to do.

A Release Schedule:

You need to figure out a content release schedule that works for both yourself and your members. Try to find a schedule that is not so long that your members will lose interest. And not too short that they won’t have time to consume, reflect, and maybe take action on your content, either.

Create some level of excitement — and by so doing, your members will happily return to your site for more.

The Best WordPress Plugins to Drip Content

So, if you know it’s what you want, then the question is, which WordPress plugins will give you the feature? Basically, there are four WordPress membership plugins that I recommend that support content dripping.

That’s not to say a few others also promise the feature. But I’ve had issues with those because some of them aren’t GPL. Others are really complex to use, and others have horrible support. And while others promote their plugin, they rarely update the codebase.

Instead, I prefer the plugins that are easy to use, powerful in nature, and are well-supported. The options below are all products I have used or am currently using on projects. And what I can tell you is that they work, and they work quite well!

4 WordPress Plugins to help Drip Content include:

iThemes Exchange ($97/year) – Potentially the easiest of the entire group to get set up. Also, by just 2 dollars, the least expensive. The iThemes team continues to grow their Exchange product but their Membership extension does what it needs to do, and won’t require a lot of learning on your part to make it happen.
MemberPress ($99/year) – Also a very easy and relatively inexpensive solution. And as a membership solution, it’s further along in it’s product roadmap. It supports a variety of additional features too. Like pausing a membership that makes it a fan favorite.
MemberMouse ($19/month) – MemberMouse may be the most powerful of the bunch. It has an incredible list of features but will take a bit longer to learn. And it’s built for everyone, from startups to the enterprise.
Cart66 Cloud ($25/month) – Cart66 is the only one of this bunch that offers an entire ecommerce solution beyond just a membership solution. So, if you want to drip membership content while also selling other products, you’ll want to check them out.

NB: WP EasyCart has acquired Cart66 and will continue to fulfill its mission of delivering high-quality eCommerce at an affordable price. It has been in the eCommerce business for over 10+ years. And is continuing to scale its Shopping Cart platform.

For more information, you can visit www.wpeasycart.com or contact their sales department at [email protected].

Takeaway,

Eventually, it takes a lot of hard work both mentally and physically to produce quality articles, videos, courses, and more for your members. Coming up with new valuable content is great, and I certainly recommend doing this as much as you can.

A constant flow of production will keep your site growing organically and keep your members satisfied. But, if you fail to produce in a timely manner, your members will notice. They’ll wonder if there is still any value to being a subscriber.

Read Also: How IBM needs your help! Create an IBM Cloud Resource Visualizer

Now, I am not proposing that you move all of your content into a drip schedule. I’m suggesting you take a look at what resources you currently have. Especially, that fit well together in a Series and could be delivered on a reasonable release schedule. This will make your site seem fresher for longer.

Members will move through your content with focus and ease, without being overwhelmed.