Outpost Report
Every day, we send you an Outpost Report email that lets you know how many new subscribers you have, how many started paying, donations, how many canceled, and an overview of the action emails we sent on your behalf. These reports are continually expanding to give you a daily view into how your site is performing.
Plausible Analytics
We use Plausible Analytics to measure page views and engagement on your website. It’s like Google Analytics, only they don’t report your data back to a billion-dollar company. They are an independent, successful small company, and our group buying power makes it possible for you to use their services for a fraction of the cost you’d pay if you signed up yourself.
On a pragmatic note, many people now block Google Analytics, which gives you a less-full picture of what’s actually happening on your site, and recent rulings in the EU find that Google Analytics is illegal.
Contextly
We use another cookie-less analytics system for the Luna tier and above called Contextly to provide multiple recommendation modules on your site that give readers ways to read related posts from your site, as well as seeing your most popular and evergreen content. Studies show that when readers read more than one post from a site at a time, they are far more likely to return in the future.
While primarily a recommendations system to help readers read more of your work, Contextly also provides daily and weekly reports to your inbox that give you a sense of how your site is doing generally, what your best-performing posts are, where your traffic is coming from, and even which of your categories are most popular. Many people find that getting a report is far more useful than visiting a dashboard.
Member-Only Comments
Member-only comments not only give people a reason to become a supporting subscriber, they also allow you to have a healthy dialogue. That means your comment section won’t get over-run with spam or drive-by haters, allowing you to build a community without spending hours per week moderating and dealing with abuse from anonymous trolls.
Responsive User Buttons
We allow you to put customizable buttons on your site that show different messages to different kinds of readers. Free readers see a message to subscribe to your email list, logged in free subscribers get a prompt to join as a supporting subscriber, monthly subscribers are prompted to upgrade to an annual account, and annual users see a message to give a donation or give a gift subscription.
Additionally, there’s a version that only shows prompt messages to unknown and free readers, while showing nothing to your paid readers, so you can reward your paying readers with a better reading experience.
Image Credit: "Andromeda Galaxy" NASA-JPL/Caltech