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.
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.
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
> 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
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.