Is there a feature in Ghost, when you can allow for non-members to read e.g. 3 premium stories per month and only after require member signup? Basically, same as a Medium feature: You have 3 free member-only stories left this month
I don’t think this is something that would be implemented, because of statements like this:
Real content gating
Your premium content is properly protected and cannot be accessed in any way without an account. Even if JavaScript is disabled.
~ Ghost Features Page
There are lots of workarounds to view unlimited premium stories once you can view one premium story without payment.
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what about having it as a marketing tool?
Sure - if you are willing enough you’ll go past this.
But most people will subscribe anyway. especially if its for content already designed to be free, and we just want people to subscribe to the newsletter more.
Its a great way to nudge someone who binge content on the site in one sitting to take the extra step and subscribe.
What you are describing is a metered paywall. I used one for years when my site was on Wordpress, and overall, it worked well. You can adjust the number of articles someone can read for free, and the period before the “meter” resets.
One of the biggest advantages of a metered paywall as opposed to a hard one is that Google and other search engines can crawl your content, so you get the SEO benefits, without having to have everything open to all. (By the same token, I’m not sure what happens with Ghost “premium” stories when it comes to search engine crawling and SEO.)
I’ve looked into implementing one of the paywall solutions into Ghost, and it is either pretty expensive, or technically just about impossible. You can do the “trial plan” within Ghost, but that’s not really the same thing.
If you come across a solution, you might post it back here.
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