Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizi...
Popularity Report
 |
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
|||
|
Rank
URL Tag Cloud
Bookmark History
Saved by 7 people (1 private), first by anonymouse user on 2009-02-10
- Cwhooker on 2009-06-08 - Tags publishing.models
- Lampertina on 2009-02-25 - Tags micropayments , monetizing , business_model , kachingle
- Innosight on 2009-02-20 - Tags no_tag
- Lindblom on 2009-02-18 - Tags monetizing content , business model , micropayments , ecommerce , publishing
- Avatarantella on 2009-02-17 - Tags microPayments , money , monetization , content , business
Public Sticky notes
Many people in the newspaper industry are already in full-fledged panic mode, and one of the recent responses has been a wave of calls to resurrect an online publishing business model that has not yet worked: micropayments.
Highlighted by cynmccune
This approach hasn't worked. It won't work. Is completely counter to the nature of the Internet. It will hasten newspapers' death spiral.
Highlighted by cynmccune
If the newspaper industry takes Isaacson's advice, then anyone who still works at newspapers should panic!
Highlighted by cynmccune
The user must be given the option of whether to pay for a Web site's content (by financially supporting the site), or read it for free.
Highlighted by cynmccune
To start with, publishers have to get over the idea that they are going to get paid directly by the user. For the vast majority of a news publisher's content, there can be no barriers before an article asking the user if he wants to pay a penny or a nickel, or buy a $2 monthly subscription, to read on.
The user must be given the option of whether to pay for a Web site's content (by financially supporting the site), or read it for free. I'm betting this one will be a tough pill to swallow for many industry executives with traditional media mindsets, but it's critical because it fits the culture, indeed the nature, of the Internet. Traditional micropayment schemes for online news content -- "pay up or go elsewhere" -- fight it, and thus are doomed to fail, in my view.
The user must be given the option of whether to pay for a Web site's content (by financially supporting the site), or read it for free. I'm betting this one will be a tough pill to swallow for many industry executives with traditional media mindsets, but it's critical because it fits the culture, indeed the nature, of the Internet. Traditional micropayment schemes for online news content -- "pay up or go elsewhere" -- fight it, and thus are doomed to fail, in my view.
Highlighted by lampertina
Newspaper executives also have to grasp the notion that few publishers will be able to get very many people to pay for their content specifically. The Wall Street Journal Online can do it, because many of its paid online subscribers are businesspeople who can charge the subscription bill to their expense accounts. Most other newspapers will only be able to charge online users directly for truly premium content that is not replicated somewhere else
Highlighted by lampertina
Your once-powerful newspaper brand doesn't mean as much as it used to, and to get paid for newspaper content online, it must become part of a giant pool of content that's financially supported en masse.
Highlighted by cynmccune
Think of it this way and you'll understand the core concept behind Kachingle: Just as online users currently pay an Internet provider $30 or more a month for their computers to access the Internet, and perhaps a monthly fee for all the music they want from a service like Rhapsody, they'll also pay a monthly fee for all the news and blog content on the Web.
Highlighted by cynmccune
Newspapers probably can charge for some multi-platform personalized news and information services, if they're good enough and useful enough. But that's not charging for the content (the news), it's charging for the valuable service of individual customization.
Highlighted by lampertina
The next important point to grasp about the Kachingle model is that it allows individuals to financially support the online content providers that they like best.
Highlighted by cynmccune
Your once-powerful newspaper brand doesn't mean as much as it used to, and to get paid for newspaper content online, it must become part of a giant pool of content that's financially supported en masse.
Highlighted by lampertina
Now what happens is that Kachingle tracks your Web site and blog visits over the month. If you visited NYTimes.com 30 times, Editorandpublisher.com 10 times, and the blog SteveOuting.com 10 times (but none of the other sites that you support), then NYTimes.com would get 60% of your monthly Kachingle fee, and Editorandpublisher.com and my blog would get 20% each. In other words, the money you spend on your monthly Kachingle account is allotted by how often you visit the sites you support, rather than every site you support getting an even split of your money. (You may click to support a blog, but then never return to it; that blog won't get any of your money other than for the initial visit.)
Highlighted by lampertina
If you'd like to understand more about the problem with any content system having "mental transaction costs," read this 2003 article by Clay Shirky, in which he makes a solid argument why microtransactions for Internet content cannot work, and explains why so many micropayment companies -- going back to the mid 1990s -- have failed. (In response to the recent wave of calls to resurrect the micropayment model for online content, Shirky recently wrote this blog post slapping down the arguments of its proponents.)
Highlighted by lampertina
The trick -- and this is the part that traditional-thinking publishers will have trouble accepting -- is that you are not just asking users to support your content, you are asking them to support all the news and blog content online.
But if this bothers you, think about it for a minute. When you get your users to sign up for Kachingle and start paying for content, you're helping lots of other Web publishers. And as all those other Web publishers and bloggers encourage their users to sign up for Kachingle, they are helping your site earn more money. Call it the power of the commons. The winners are the blogs and Web sites with the best content and that attract the most visitors and fans. Newspaper sites can win at that game, right?
But if this bothers you, think about it for a minute. When you get your users to sign up for Kachingle and start paying for content, you're helping lots of other Web publishers. And as all those other Web publishers and bloggers encourage their users to sign up for Kachingle, they are helping your site earn more money. Call it the power of the commons. The winners are the blogs and Web sites with the best content and that attract the most visitors and fans. Newspaper sites can win at that game, right?
Highlighted by lampertina
Also, there's the social networking aspect of the Kachingle service, which will use Facebook and Twitter, for instance, to spread the word. Let's take an example in which I’m a paying Kachingler and I click the medallion on Editorandpublisher.com to support it. Assuming I've approved this in my privacy settings, Kachingle will note that "Steve Outing just became a financial supporter of Editorandpublisher.com via Kachingle" (or wording along those lines) and post it to my Twitter feed and my Facebook news feed, for my followers and friends to see and be influenced by it.
Highlighted by lampertina
KISS -- keep it simple, stupid. Online publishers, including newspaper Web sites, are more likely to convince people to pay a monthly "Internet content fee" if everyone is in it together and there's one ubiquitous badge on every content site that an individual visits (which always remembers you). The publishers who make the most money will be those that produce the best content, and thus get the most people to support them via the Kachingle system. That should be to the advantage of newspaper Web sites' quality content, right?
Highlighted by cynmccune
Typaldos strongly believes that that's the wrong approach, because it again puts up barriers to contributing. "Having two systems would be incredibly confusing to users ... and not user-centric which is the big paradigm shift that has to happen for this model to work," she says.
Highlighted by lampertina
Typaldos argues it this way: "Every time a blogger signs up a Kachingler, that person is now a potential contributor to every other Kachingle-enabled blog/Web site/service. So as bloggers/Web sites sign up Kachinglers they are tapping into the economics of ‘increasing returns.’ If NYTimes.com tried to have its own system, it would not benefit from the millions of other Kachinglers that the millions of other Web sites/blogs had signed up. Yes, it's true, they have to share the dollars of those Kachinglers, but since the distribution is based on daily visits, it doesn't really matter which site signs them up, just which sites they truly love (and turn on contributing for)."
Highlighted by lampertina
from what Typaldos says about her patent, that would mean a Google acquisition of Kachingle
Highlighted by lampertina
Public Comment