What is Content Locking?
Imagine you are on a toll bridge and you want to cross. There has to be a fee paid before you will be able to cross the bridge and enjoy the bounty that is on the other side. This is the same sort of process that is followed when it comes to content locking. The system allows you to be sure you will be paid for times when your content is accessed. Regardless of what you have online – it could be a video, article or app – there is a way to make sure that no one gets to access it unless they pay you.
In this case, the toll is not always a monetary toll, but can an act such as completing forms or taking up on an offer that is presented. Once that has been done, the content can be viewed and a commission will be paid. There have been concerns that this was not effective, but research has shown that much more can be earned from this than from the AdSense program. Additionally, content locking is easy to start and run.
Once you have the content that you want to lock, you need to find suitable and appropriate offers. An example will be if you run a restaurant rating site, coupons for discounts will be a good offer, especially if you can get them for your highly rated restaurants. One way to draw people in is to produce a free guide – or at least free until near the end- that should allow you to earn some decent money. However, you should be careful with content locking. Excessive locking, and giving too little, may lead to a bad reputation.
Once you have decided what area to lock, you need to find the offers that are going to be locked, and they will have to be good. No one will pay for locked content if what they received last time was of less interest than what they had already had for free. It can be tempting to look for really obscure offers, but they may not be of interest to enough people to make it worth the effort. Now all you need to do is generate the traffic. The best way to do this is through the tried and tested means that have worked for others such as SEO, PPC or by displaying ads.