What is Guildweb Online?
Guildweb Online is a portal for joining and accessing the guildweb, a network of Australian websites sharing a common paywall. Historically, craftsmen and merchants banded together to maintain standards and provide mutual support. The guildweb brings this principle to the internet, with small and independent websites sharing discovery and revenue. Guildweb Online is operated by The Prespace Network (ABN 94209554337), and is based in Perth, Western Australia.
What is a Guildweb Subscription?
Subscription fatigue is real. Nobody wants to pay for dozens of online services, and not many will click ‘sign me up’ at a random paywall. With a Guildweb Subscription you are paying for access to premium content on a potentially unlimited network, not just one website. At the ‘Member’ level you can sign up your own website to earn revenue. The Guildweb Subscription is only available in Australia (for now, at least).
How does a member website make money?
Each month we take 80% of the after-tax subscription revenue for the whole network and divide it by total monthly active users. Each member website is then allocated revenue according to its share of activity. As a website owner, if a subscriber visits a guildweb page at your website at least once in a month they are effectively paying you a share of network revenue. In practice this means that you will want visitors to come back every week to be sure that they will count as an active user every month. This economic model is about value and loyalty, not clickbait and screentime.
How does it work?
When a subscriber visits Guildweb Online as a signed-in user, they are issued a 28-day cookie that serves as their passport across the guildweb network. Visiting as a guildweb subscriber does not require signing in to the member website being visited, and no identifying information is shared with the site. Guildweb pages are compatible with many of the main WordPress membership plugins, so that membership-based access continues to function on a page that is otherwise restricted to guildweb subscribers.