In the previous Project 2 post, I mentioned that one of the key outstanding design items was to come up with a business model for the site. I now have an idea of what I want to do, and this post I'll try and explain it.
The model is actually pretty simple:
The site will be based on a freemium model where all members will be able to post up to 5 articles for free. However, free articles will be (subtly) watermarked when then are viewed. Something like this:
Subscribed users will be able to permanently post more articles ( 20?), and their published articles will not be watermarked as long as their subscription is active.
This model is simple, but it does hillight a couple of consideration points for a freemium business model
- What features do paid subscribers get that free users don't
- What happens when a subscription is cancelled. How do you gracefully remove the paid features when a subscription expires?
In this case, I've chosen to watermark the pages for 'free plan' users, and to regress subscribed users to this model if they allow their subscription to expire. This should enable a few things
- The site will be useable for free users, giving people an incentive to use the site as a free service
- There will be tangible benefits for subscribing and maintaining a subscription, which should lead to people signing up for a subscription service assuming that is is appropriately priced.
- The penalty for letting a subscription lapse will be minor - all paid published articles will be permanently available, but will simply incur a watermark if the subscription lapses.
I'm reasonable happy with this concept. It still needs some work (how much will the paid plan be per year? how many articles will this allow? How exactly will the free articles be watermarked), but this is enough to move forwards with.
With this concept sketched out, I am ready to start integrating the site into some real world services. I'll cover that process in future posts.
