Drizzle paywall

Drizzle paywall is a simple, scalable and user-friendly paywall, subscription and membership product for any publisher or online content creator: https://getdrizzle.com. It's built using React, JS, Meteor, Node, MongoDB and is compatible with any web technology and stack. We also have a Wordpress plugin and Drupal module.

It's implemented natively, not via external JS file. The paywall takes about 30 min to set up and deploy and only 5 min to install it on any type of website (copy-paste code snippet). This product is built mainly by Drizzle team.

Our blog about paywalls and monetization: https://medium.com/drizzle-blog

Live example of publisher's dashboard: https://app.getdrizzle.com/signup

If instead of selling content, you're interested in detecting Adblock users and recovering ad revenue, check out our Adblock detector at this repo: https://github.com/tima101/Native-adblock-detector

To help you decide if this product is what you need, read these 2 blog posts:

1. Part I: https://medium.com/drizzle-blog/how-to-get-more-subscribers-with-a-user-friendly-paywall-part-i-83887372547d#.i3kpg2vaq

2. Part II: https://medium.com/drizzle-blog/how-to-get-more-paying-users-with-user-friendly-paywall-part-ii-8e09766f62eb#.dwv46xnoa

Who this product is built for:

• any publisher with premium content and who believes that advertising revenue should be supplemented with direct revenue;
• any startup which sells premium content, digital products (example, videos), or premium features;
• any website owner who has premium, valuable, unique content and wants to sell it via membership and subscriptions.

Why this product exists:

The majority of online publishers and content creators need an alternative revenue model as online advertising keeps declining. Many have great content that people are willing to pay for, but they don't have a simple way to put up a paywall or their current paywall is too diffcult to encourage users to pay. We've made this paywall easy to use on any type of website, and we've made the process of signing up and paying as seamless as possible.

For more on ad revenue and why publishers must find alternative revenue sources, read:

• Why Medium ditched ad-based business model and launches subscriptions: https://medium.com/@getdrizzle/subscriptions-on-medium-f23de6677464#.92s0vj4xa

• Why online ad revenue is declining: https://medium.com/@getdrizzle/big-shifts-in-online-content-monetization-bdebd920bf4b#.oyjvxcqif

• Why it's so hard for ad-supported business to pivot: https://medium.com/@getdrizzle/challenges-for-content-monetization-7a1b813ba19d#.wr3ousv2o

Features

Open-source license (MIT license)

• Email and Facebook signup and login, Email verification
• Payments, subscriptions, refunds via Stripe
• User-friendly paywall. Login with 2 clicks, pay with 2 clicks. Screenshots: https://medium.com/@getdrizzle/how-to-get-more-subscribers-with-a-user-friendly-paywall-part-i-83887372547d#.g0sx8k3km
• Paywalled data is secure by hiding via server-side method, not client-side
• Paywall is server-side rendered
• Mobile-optimized
• Content performance metrics. See detailed analytics of user engagement on every web page with paywalled content:
• Complete membership management. Get detailed analytics for every user and how he/she engages with your content. Segments users who are in each stage of your subscription sales funnel:
• Payments and Payouts analytics
• One-click refunds
• Stripe integration
• Customizable UI
• Social proof: Show how many people have purchased your content to encourage others to sign up
• Content recommendations below each paywall, Curated lists include: Newest content, Popular content
• Content search, User search, Search by date
• Column sorting to identify best performing content
• Content categories
• Settings for individual pages
• Footer bar and in-site links
• Mailgun and Mailchimp integration
• Set up a custom welcome email to new signups
• Send email notifications to any group of users
• Send a custom email to individual user
• Send a custom email to group of users
• Group users by stage in sales funnel
• Set up single payments
• Set up monthly subscriptions
• Set up a Free Trial offer for subscriptions
• Ability to create single sign-on system accross multiple websites
• Set up on Wordpress or Drupal with our plugin or module (via API key)
• Paywall videos
• Metered paywall
• Lead generation (ask for verified email address instead of a payment to access content)
• Daily pass
• Additional content recommendations below each paywall. Curated lists: Trending content, Similar content
• Referral program
• Discount code for subscriptions
• Annual and Weekly subscriptions
• Section-specific subscriptions
• Export user data

Setup of Publishers app (./publishers)

In my local build, I use node v5.7.0 and npm 3.8.2 inside all apps. To set node version:

. ~/.nvm/nvm.sh
nvm use 5.7.0

Publishers app is the dashboard where the publisher or website owner sets up subscription plans, monitors content performance, and monitors user payments.

In main folder, run:

npm install

In ./publishers folder, run:

meteor npm install
meteor npm install --save bcrypt

Create local-settings.json file, example:

{
    "AWSAccessKeyId": "AKIAIVxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "AWSSecretAccessKey": "+BaPedgw1uyb0Exxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "S3bucket": "zenmarket",
    "embedlyKey": "e40b9936xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx",
    "private": {
    },
    "public": {
    }
}

Publishers app can be started locally by:

./start-local.sh

Publishers app uses remote demo MongoDB. Feel free to specify local or remote MONGO_URL in the start-local.sh file. Example of deployed Publishers app can be found here: https://app.getdrizzle.com/

When you start the app for the first time, DB will be seeded by a few documents: Admin user will be created (users collection), website (products collection) and paywalled page (payg_content_walls collection).

App will be running at http://localhost:8021/ To find email and password of your Admin user, go to: ./publishers/imports/startup/server/seeds.js

You will log in and revisit http://localhost:8021/setup page after we are done with setting up Users apps.

Setup of Users apps (./users/..)

Remember to set up the right node version, or later on gulp it won't run.

In ./users folder, run:

./setup.sh

After it's done, make sure that ./users/widgetFile contains settings.json file:

{
  "API_URL": "http://localhost:8051"
}

In ./users/widget folder, create local-settings.json:

{
  "PUBLISHER_ROOT_URL": "http://localhost:8021"
}

And run:

meteor npm install --save bcrypt

To start 2 Users apps (Widget app at http://localhost:8051 and static Publisher app at http://localhost:8060), run

./start-local.sh

inside ./users folder. This will also run gulpfile.js, so widget.js file at ./users/widgetFile/src/widget.js and ./publishers/private/widget.js is updated without app restart.

Static Publisher app at http://localhost:8060 is a static website with paywalled content on the homepage.

Setup of paywall on local website (./users/publisher)

Go to http://localhost:8021/login, log in with your Admin user. Go to http://localhost:8021/setup page. Copy setup code, and paste it at the bottom of ./users/publisher/index.html.

Navigate to http://localhost:8060, you should see:

To see blue footer bar with call-to-action, go to http://localhost:8021/wall-settings and Enable call to action footer bar.

Deploy

You will need to deploy 2 apps: Publishers app ( ./publishers) and Widget app (./users/widget). Use this tool to deploy Meteor apps: https://github.com/zodern/meteor-up

Future and Contributions

This section will need more work. The next 3 steps for this open-source project:

• Improve UI and UX on Publishers app (../publishers).
• Add client-side paywalling in addition to server-side.
• Add Apple pay for easier payments on Mobile web.

License

MIT.