NAVER Premium Content: Monetization & Subscription UX for Content Creators
A subscription-based content platform that empowers creators to monetize their work while providing users with seamless access to premium content.
Project Overview
As Lead Product Designer, I designed subscription UX, creator analytics dashboards, and a video-publishing flow—expanding a text-first service into a trusted multi-format ecosystem.
The Product
Premium Contents
My Role
Product designer
Responsibilities
Lead UX/UI Design
Project Duration
Nov. 2022 - Feb. 2023
The Problem
Independent content creators need a sustainable way to monetize their written content as user demand shifts toward video-based media, making it harder to generate revenue solely from text.
The Goal
Enable content creators to seamlessly integrate video into their monetization strategies, allowing them to reach a wider audience and increase engagement. NAVER Premium Content will support this by providing a scalable subscription model and analytics tools to help creators optimize their revenue.
Top 6 Key Metrics
Achievements
During my time as the product designer, NAVER PREMIUM CONTENT scaled to 6M+ MAUs with 100% YoY growth, while driving a 883% surge in transaction volume. Improved monetization models led to a 3X increase in content sales and tripled the number of ₩1M+ monthly earners. The creator ecosystem also expanded from 15 to over 950 active contributors.
Solution: Designing a Trusted Multi-Format Experience
For Creators: Added video-first workflow to dashboard
For Subscribers: Richer video-first experience
with hybrid context
When publishing video content, the platform provides an optimized viewing experience. Videos can be mapped to playlists, and once at least one video is added, a dedicated playlist tab is created for easy access.
A payment prompt appears based on the user’s subscription status, and creators can set preview points when uploading their videos.
Iterations
Empowering Creators with Visibility and Control
From overwhelming complexity to a decision-ready dashboard, this IA became the backbone of a scalable creator tool. Added traffic-source analytics to the creator dashboard to leverage NAVER’s broader ecosystem for growth.
Context & Motivation
Hybrid Demand in a Video-First World
NAVER Premium Content launched as a text-first platform and proved its value in beta, quickly attracting a loyal base of paid subscribers.
But as 65 % of global internet traffic shifted to video, we saw that 39 % of our high-value Economy & Business creators still preferred text for rapid market analysis.
Key Pain Points & Solution Directions
Redesigning for a Seamless Video Creation and Insights Experience
Based on user interviews, we identified three core pain points: text-first publishing made video creation difficult, video content was buried in a text-oriented experience, and analytics lacked clarity, making it hard for creators to understand what actually drove performance.
To address these issues, I proposed three solution directions: a unified multi-format publishing flow for text and video, a strengthened content experience optimized for video discovery and consumption, and clearer performance signals through improved analytics and traffic source insights.
Impact & Takeaways
Delivering clear signals in complex data strengthens the entire creator ecosystem.
What I really learned from this project is that even in a very complex data environment, users ultimately need one thing — clear, meaningful signals. And in a creator ecosystem, publishing, discovery, and performance only drive growth when they reinforce each other. Strengthening that connection through system design is what creates the real flywheel.
