By Michael Evans on August 3, 2023.
We all know that reader magnets (free books, chapters, bonus scenes, or other extras) can help grow our mailing lists and eventually our paid subscription.
But there’s a huge problem with reader magnets…
Most readers don’t read them.
This isn’t because your story isn’t good enough or that you didn’t have an enticing freebie.
It’s because readers are busy, have tons of free downloads already, and immediately your story goes to the bottom of the TBR (to be read list).
But what if you could immediately jump to the top of their TBR?
Introducing Limited-Time Reader Magnets.
In this instance, readers must READ your story within a specific window of time or else they will lose access and won’t be able to read that story again.
After the window, you can move that story to a paid tier where only paid fans can access it, can unpublish the story entirely, or publish it at elsewhere at a later date.
How is this possible?
On subscription platforms, you can publish chapters, a bonus scene, or a short story to your Followers.
This makes it so that in order to read the story someone has to follow you. When a reader follows you, you receive their email address and can export it from the platform and they will receive access to all of your Follower-only content + email updates on future content you publish to followers.
You will send your readers a direct link to this story and in the description or title of the story can mention that it will only be available for a limited time (maybe 7 days, a weekend, or a month).
This will ultimately entice people not only to join your mailing list/Followers at a higher rate, but also get them to read through your content, increasing the number of people who eventually convert to Paid Members.