Micropayments
This morning Jeff shared a great article about micropayments. Micropayments are a transaction method for transferring very small amounts of money.
The article, Micropayments — It Is Time, brings up excellent points that are hard to argue.
Any micropayment system that would be implemented would need to be flexible enough to work across several platforms. Therefore, the one that I use to access selected content on the New York Times should work on ArsTechnica the same way it works on TechCrunch. Anything short of that will make it unpalatable to consumers, and thus stillborn.
Prices need to be kept amazingly low. One cent to read a blog. Five cents to read a newspaper. Four cents to listen to your favorite podcast. Nothing to the user, they would run up a bill of less than ten dollars over a month. Ten dollars a month for amazing, internet wide content? I'll signup for that deal. Works for me. People need to eat, that involves money, so throw them a bone.
— Alex Wilhelm, Micropayments — It Is Time
I'd be willing to pay for web content if it were half a cent or a couple pennies and one click payment. I'm often not willing to register all my personal info or sign up for a full online subscription if I just want to view one article. It's surprising that a widely accept micropayment solution hasn't been implemented yet.
Comments
Like the article says, the idea of micropayments has been around for a long time. There are two major hurdles to overcome, the technical and the people problem.
The technical issues are related to the costs of making payments and transferring money. Basically all money needs to stay in one system and only be cashed out in significant amounts otherwise all money is lost to fees.
The people problem is more related to getting a big enough mass on board to make it viable and convincing them it is worth it. It seems like Facebook or Google is positioned in a place where they could have enough reach to cause something to happen.
Until then we always have TipJoy for voluntary micropayments.
People pay every time they read one of my blogs. Ifyouknowwhatimean.
Prices need to be kept amazingly low. One cent to read a blog. Five cents to read a newspaper. Four cents to listen to your favorite podcast. Nothing to the user, they would run up a bill of less than ten dollars over a month. Ten dollars a month for amazing, internet wide content? I'll signup for that deal. Works for me. People need to eat, that involves money, so throw them a bone.
This is an idea who's time has definitely come. Clearly the printed media are being crushed, and yet I am not willing to pay to subscribe to any *one* of them. Like everyone else I aggregate my content from numerous sources. It won't work for me. #oyun oyna has it right. Small payments, content a la carte, adding up to $10-15 per month? Sure.
The Kindle model is worth examining. You do your commerce with one consistent vendor (Amazon), but you can subscribe to content from many vendors, from blogs to daily newspapers to weekly and monthly magazines.
For example, I subscribe to the Ars Technica blog feed ($2/month), The Apple Core blog ($1/month), and the Boston Globe ($10/month). I get a constant stream of updates from the blogs, and the newspaper each morning.
Now, yes, I can get these blogs free via a web browser, and the news by reading Boston.com. But they're so much more convenient when they stream into my little reading device wirelessly, ready for me to consume by just picking it up.
It's not as fine-grained as cent-per-read micropayments, but I think this actually makes it more practical. I don't have to decide, based on a headline, whether an article is worth my nickle. I just get everything. And if I decide it's not worth it, I'm still only out a buck.
And actually, in that case i'm out nothing -- you get the first couple weeks of any newspaper, blog or magazine free on Kindle, so you can truly try before you buy.
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Hi Dave, Thanks for the mention! Glad to see other people writing on this, especially those willing to actually pay for content. We are the minority.