When to propose a relationship to your Anonymous Visitor

You make a fair point about the entitlement there. Free content does indeed have to pay off somewhere else it wont be free much longer. I just wish it didn't interrupt the reading flow!

There was a suggestion elsewhere in the thread of triggering the popover based on actions rather than time which might work better (Again, only on me that I know of - others will differ!)

For an example off the top of my head maybe the top of the bottom third of the currently visible window going past the start of the comment section[1] triggers it, at that point I'm probably done reading the article and about to leave or read some comments. There's a huge amount of variables here but if it was a good article and the popover is a mailing list signup chances are I'd be open to signing up at that point. From there you sell via email later on.

Unfortunately I don't have any real marketing data (or skills for that matter) to back me up which means there's a lot of "I" going on in my posts here, which definitely adds to the over-entitled jerk appearance. Chances are a lot of people will sign up and will click ads and websites would do a lot better with them as the reader than myself :-)

[1] Wow that was a horrible mash of words on reflection. Hopefully it's readable.

Good businesses don't care about the content the same way that Michaelangelo didn't care about content: he would paint, or sculpt, or whatever. Whatever the patron would pay for.

Naively, you could say he just didn't care that much about either (painting or sculpture). If he really cared, he would have commmitted to it and not just done it because that's where the money was.

That's obviously dumb though. Business owners aren't forced to be in the business of attracting intelligent, engaged readers to great, engrossing content. They could be operating a porn video feed.

The truth is this: great content doesn't write itself, and web contents are perfectly within their bounds to try to monetize the experience or convert their visitors to a bit more.

Is there a way to do it in a more subtle, less distracting fashion? There might be.

Let's work on it. I don't mind the overlay on the economist web site's articles, at the moment, for example - do you? Is it still too much?

How do we allow customers to know that the content they are engaging wtih for minutes at a time is worth something to write, and requires a level of relationship, while still letting them read them quickly and effortlessly?

A subtle hint about this that would let people realize what is going on, while allowing them to engage without distraction, would be good for everyone.

Yes, but that's my point. Using only what's easy to include in calculations biases the outcome to what improves (easily measurable) conversion rate and not what improves the (difficult to measure) viral coefficient. This would be fine if the viral coefficient were independent of the variables they are adjusting to improve conversion, but I'm saying that they're not.

I think you have a fundamental bug in your model of the funnel. The wide end of the funnel is the people who hear about the site and arrive there no matter what the means. Those who sign up are the ones advancing to the next stage (your clip art only has one stage, which may reflect your misunderstanding). So putting up an immediate sign up doesn't cut the number of people who come in through the top (as the article says) instead it just makes the first stage of your funnel shorter.

Now the aim of each funnel stages is to discard as many unqualified buyers as possible as soon as possible to avoid wasting your (and their) time. But how soon is "possible"? You have to qualify them (give them some content in your case, and see if they engage) to see if you are a good match. If you push the sign up right up front yes, more people may advance to the next stage, but you have no idea as to the quality of the leads (%false positive and %false negative).

Consider the rediculous extrema: you could assign everyone a user id when they first arrive (basically: a cookie!) which would give you a 100% conversion rate. Or you could disallow any sign up at all: a 0% conversion rate. It's easy to see that these boundary cases are useless.

But how do you know that your new approach isn't equally as useless? All that mathematics is exciting but doesn't address the two core questions: how many of these sign ups became revenue generators and how much revenue was abandoned to people who wouldn't sign up?.

TL;DR: You've analysed how quickly you get out of the driveway without looking at how that relates to getting to your destination (say, if you're even turning in the right direction).

> If you can show the relevance or benefit, user will sign up on their own.

This is naive and ignores the wide gap between what motivated people will do and what people definitely don't want to do.

> it is either because they are not the right target OR you suck at explaining how your product can give them what they want/need

Inertia is a powerful force. One of the core drivers for marketing activity is to lead people to action, not simply explain things.

Politicians explicitly ask for votes because the prodding helps. Electronics sales reps ask if you'd like to buy insurance for your device. Restaurant receipts ask for tips. Sites ask for email signups.