Paywall models
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Paul BaranowskiPaul Baranowski
    Posts: 389Member, Administrator, Sourcefabric Team
    Hi all -
    I want to gather a sampling of paywall options out there, and the kind of
    options that our customers want. A "paywall" is any method you use to
    charge subscribers for your content.

    Some examples:
    1) you allow people to look at 10 free articles, and then you make them pay
    after that.
    2) you give away free articles and charge for other articles

    Please let me know the methods you know about, which methods work best, and
    if you are a user of our software, which methods you are interested in
    seeing implemented.


    Paul Baranowski
    CTO, Sourcefabric, http://sourcefabric.org

    +1 (416) 832-6436 (Cell)
    Skype: paulbaranowski
    720 Bathurst St. / Suite 203 / Toronto / ON / M5S 2R4 / Canada

  • 3 Comments sorted by
  • Vote Up0Vote Down Claudia CruzClaudia Cruz
    Posts: 67Member, Sourcefabric Team
    things I have seen/heard of:

    1. free subscribers with partial access to certain parts of the site (which is what you mentioned on your 1 example) forever or for specific number of articles or specific time
    2. charging for the archive

    something i haven't heard being done but that i have discussed "offline" with some editors:

    3. being able to monetize the content more in a "news agency" kind of way. Meaning, selling particular content (through regular syndication to other media outlets or upon direct requests). For this I like an option used by an online solution to show and sell photography called "instant sale". It gives you the option to send the info instantly to somebody else and charge for it. Media could probably find some money selling, not so much their texts but their photography archive.

    -ccruz
    Claudia L. Cruz
    @ccruz
  • I'm not sure if this belongs to this discussion, but I'll mention it anyway;
    we already need
    - first, 'wishlist' functionality - remembered selection of articles chosen
    by the (registered) user that he can manipulate after login - add, delete,
    process payment.
    - second, shopping basket functionality - session based storage of chosen
    articles that can be forwarded for payment after browsing is finished (or
    saved as wishlist if user is registered)
    Best, Ljuba

    On 23 December 2010 20:02, Claudia Cruz <campsite-dev@lists.sourcefabric.org
    > wrote:

    > things I have seen/heard of:
    >
    > 1. free subscribers with partial access to certain parts of the site (which
    > is what you mentioned on your 1 example) forever or for specific number of
    > articles or specific time
    > 2. charging for the archive
    >
    > something i haven't heard being done but that i have discussed "offline"
    > with some editors:
    >
    > 3. being able to monetize the content more in a "news agency" kind of way.
    > Meaning, selling particular content (through regular syndication to other
    > media outlets or upon direct requests). For this I like an option used by an
    > online solution to show and sell photography called "instant sale". It gives
    > you the option to send the info instantly to somebody else and charge for
    > it. Media could probably find some money selling, not so much their texts
    > but their photography archive.
    >
    > -ccruz
    >
    >

    --
    Ljuba Rankovic
    Senior Front End Developer, Sourcefabric
    ljuba.rankovic@sourcefabric.org

    http://www.sourcefabric.org
    http://www.twitter.com/Sourcefabric
  • Hi Paul,

    Here are the paywall models that come immediately to mind:

    Section-by-section (NY Times Select) - certain sections are free, but others are paid

    Pay-per-article (New England Journal of Medicine) - abstracts are free, but full articles (and PDFs of the articles) are paid

    Time-based daily/weekly/monthly for entire site
    Visits-based (Financial Times) - heavy visitors to a site are prompted to subscribe, while occasional visitors (from social media or Google) are free because their bounce rates are high

    New news free (i.e. today's issue), archives paid

    News free, value-added features (mobile, crosswords, games, classifieds) paid

    Douglas Arellanes
    Director of Innovation
    Sourcefabric, o.p.s.

    Find a way or make one.