How To Paywall Your Content Or Services & Earn Crypto

Content creation has become an essential monetisable commodity of the internet, individuals and businesses. Websites worldwide are now turning to content marketing either to gather leads, drive eCommerce transactions, sell ad space within the content and recently Paywalling content.

Paywalling content is by no means a new monetisation tactic with pay-TV have been running for years, and subscription model SAAS businesses using the freemium model have used with great success. Paywall content may have been used exclusively by multi-nationals and large scale businesses or publications. With the value of individual content creators, it has now become a popular tool for the influencer and online content creator.

Paywalls are becoming the norm

Sites like Patreon have been great for video creators, Medium has been ideal for bloggers, and Substack has been focusing on newsletter creators.

These centralised services have been influential in the growth of paywall content and normalising it for creators and consumers. Yet, they are still centralised businesses taking a slice for their services; this is by no means an issue for top creators, but for others, every penny going directly to the creator would be appreciated.

Another issue with centralised Paywalls is the rigid payment structures they offer and in many cases turns people off from purchasing content, if they have to pay for a subscription. Many readers and viewers may want the pay per view option; instead, which isn't always readily available as micro-payments don't always make economic sense.

Paywalls going crypto

Cryptocurrency has done plenty to cut out the middle man, and with the help of Bitcoin, creators can now paywall specific URLs or parts of their website and accept Bitcoin in exchange for opening up this content. Cryptocurrency paywalls allow readers to access content based on what they want to consume, how much they wish to consume regardless of location or currency, opening up your potential paying audience.

Additionally having no third parties means most of the payment goes directly to the creator, meaning creators can reduce prices, gauge audience responses and adjust pricing for the best returns.

Creating your crypto paywall

If you're interested in creating a cryptocurrency based Paywall, but you're no coder, then here are a few solutions you can test out. Mind you, these tools are still in their development phases and require some refinement. Yet, they are great for experimentation and getting used to the idea of crypto paywalls which will surely become more popular in the future.

1. LN Pay

LN Pay is a lightning network-based paywall system that uses Bitcoins second layer solution to collect payments. All you need to do is create a URL that is hidden from public view and add it to the service and set the amount you want to receive per unlock.

You will then receive an encrypted link that redirects users to the LN paywall for payment before redirecting a user to the content.

• Visit LN Pay

2. BitMonet

BitMonet is an open-source project with the code available on GitHub for review or tweak it into something new that works for you. Users can set your their prices, upload your logo, change the colour of the buttons, and more to match your branding when setting up paywalls.

BitMonet does use the base-chain for Bitcoin, so please factor this into your pricing model and check mining fees to ensure pricing makes sense for both you and the consumer.

• Visit BitMonet

3. 2key Network

Zoom has become the meeting room of choice worldwide, and sitting on Zoom does tend to exhaust a lot of billable hours. Instead of having your zoom meetings and then sending off an invoice, you can use 2key.network to customise your zoom link with a Paywall structure. Users can then pay in both fiat or crypto to unlock your actual zoom link.

• Visit 2key.Network

4. Satoshi Pay

Satoshi Pay looks to be one of the more polished products in this list, offering both an API integration into websites and a WordPress plugin. Whether you’re looking for a frictionless paywall, a hassle-free donation process, or a powerful adblocker detection tool, do it with our flexible micropayment platform.

• Visit Satoshi Pay

5. Bitaps

Bitapps offers you an encrypted paywall tool that you can use to create payment lock on files or a text message where user need to pay the assigned amount of Bitcoins to access the content.

File content, file names and all messages including descriptions are encrypted in the browser.

The Bitaps service does not have access to content on its servers, so your media data is completely protected with AES encryption. Service charge flat rate fee 0.0002 BTC for each sale. Files and media data under 200MB hosted for free within one year. Files greater than 200MB hosted for free for 72 hours.

• Visit BitAps

6. BitWall

BitWall launched with much fanfare when its Bitcoin and Twitter-powered paywall hit social media feeds leveraging the Chicago Sun-Times content, which did well to announce the app. Its early success gathered loads of attention and lead to BitWall recent acquisition by Watch Out! Inc.

• Visit BitWall

7. MicroPay Link (Service no longer available)

MicroPay link leverages the Bitcoin Lightning Networks payment channels to allow creators to paywall their links and set a fee for access. Users do not need to pay monthly fees. MicroPay wall requires no signup and does not track your data while giving you access to the content in a PDF format.

• Visit MicroPay Link

Creating content for crypto

Creating content for micropayments is still a small subset of the market, but more capital flows into blockchain. We'll see more products like these; we'll see better iterations of the product. I do not doubt that Paywalls will become common among content creators looking to monetise their efforts online.

Have you started to PayWall your content? How has it managed to work for you? Which option do you use to Paywall your content? Let us know in the comments down below.

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Recommended reading

If you enjoyed this post and have a little extra time to dive deeper down the rabbit hole, why not check out the following posts on cryptocurrency and blockchain.

• Why Blockchain and Cryptocurrency Is The Future Of Money
• 24 Ways To Earn Cryptocurrency
• How To Pay Tax On Cryptocurrency In South Africa
• How To Buy Bitcoin In South Africa
• Why Does Your Bitcoin Wallet Address Keep Changing?

Disclaimer: This article should not be taken as, and is not intended to provide any investment advice and is for educational purposes only. As of the time posting the writers may or may not have holdings in some of the coins or tokens they cover. Please conduct your own thorough research before investing in any cryptocurrency as all investments contain risk.

Tags: cryptocurrency, paywall