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