How to best implement "metered model" on a site

[jmueller]

Hi,

I'm scratching my head over how to best implement the "metered model" on a site without users being able to game it all too easily.

Has anybody in this QA forums implemented one before and is willing to share his/her best practises and findings?

Currently I think raising the bar to force everybody to login is a bad idea + we would still need to open the site for google and other engines and can be tricked that way. Also this might lead to some penalty (cloaking)?

Using cookies might not be enought as I think almost every Internet user these days knows that this might be the #1 place to look and they are deleted in a second.

Counting based on a users IP-adress is also a bit critical as this is not accurate enough.

Should we just use cookies and hope for the best?

[KeriMorgret]

Can you share with us the topic of this content, or how tech savvy the users may be? If the metered content is about PPC best practices, then you're going to have an audience who certainly knows how to delete their cookies. If your content is for people who flew airplanes in World War II, you'll have a much lower percentage of people hacking their cookies to get to your content.

I haven't done this myself, so I'm unfortunately not able to offer you any advice other than to consider how tech-savvy your customers may be.

[jmueller]

Hi Keri,

It's the site of a regional newspaper, so the audience is certainly mixed. I don't see any other suitable model than using cookies.

Nobody here who implemented a metered model before?

Thanks for your reply, Keri.

have a good day.

Jan