PaywallsWhat works and what doesn’t
!10 some best practices according to our experience
Per BuerCTO
Varnish Software (Freemium / Premium business model)
Original Heidelberg
Original Heidelberg
Business logic
Background
• We launched our first paywall 2 year ago
• 12 projects so far
We’re moving to a paywall
Paywall concepts
• Freemium / premium paywalls
• Identity based- and anonymous metered paywalls
• Referrer-based access
• Micropayments
Lots of moving parts!
Project scope
• Paywalls involve:
• Backend, frontend, ops, business, editorial, marketing, customer support ++
• Proper project management is very important
Access control
Access Control
• Technically challenging
• Lots of different approaches
• Client (SaaS), CDN, Appserver, Edge
Scalability & Performance
• Scaling a website is harder with a paywall
• Identity based metering makes is even harder as database interactions happen at every page-view
Dev Ops
Access control rules
• Remember: Access control rules need
• To be implemented
• To be communicated to the readership
• Keep it simple if possible
• People don’t pay for things they don’t understand
Testing
Testing paywalls
• Tests now need to cover the paywall
• You need to test the whole paywall, covering VCL, CDN or Javascript based paywalls
• More complexity - higher costs
Payment
Payment is easy :-)
Subscription management
• Some newspapers have existing subscription management software that handle digital
• Those who do not might face a more complex project
Typical paywall project
• 9 months long, 3-12 month range
• Business side typically uses 3-4 months to make up their mind :-)
• Our implementation costs are in the €7-25K range and typically spans 2-4 weeks.
• New, creative models add time and cost
• (Norwegian newspaper tend to be very competent)
Summing up1. Complex projects
2. SaaS paywalls might not cut it (bias)
3. Consider scalability (bias)
4. Access control & security is hard
5. This might be the time for devops
6. Testing becomes harder
7. Statistics is different
8. Payment is easy
9. Subscription management
• Clock mechanics, http://www.flickr.com/photos/45810363@N04/4835327934/in/photostream/
• Devops, http://www.flickr.com/photos/psd/8634021085/
• Padlock, http://www.flickr.com/photos/faithmonsoon/234237378/
• Munch, The Scream.
• The rest are bought of Shutterstock
Photo credits