Don’t stop here, go unlimited! Micropayment for the News industry
I was browsing my Facebook wall this morning and an article shared by a trusted friend got my attention, I clicked the link and got to this page…
It is clear to me that the news business models don’t fit today’s technologies and readers habits. The subscription model is still based on the traditionnal way of delivering news.
You pay a monthly fee and you get all the issues of the publication. Today, even if the content is delivered online, on a tablet or on a phone, which is a good thing for the trees, the subscription model is still based on the same principles :
- You pay to have access to the whole content of the newspaper (who has the time to read everything?!?)
- You are stuck with one source of information (who can afford subscribing to 2, 3, 5 newspapers?)
But the digital revolution and social networds have changed the way people are consuming information. People are browsing on twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn… and are clicking on links shared by friends and prescriptors to get access to the news, they are not watching or reading the news anymore. So the sad part is that the news and content providers are eather giving away their content for free or blocking people who want to access it because they didn’t subscribe.
It is time to consider charging readers for the content they’re consuming, not less, not more, and at a fair price. Don’t sell your article 2$ when you’re selling the entire newspaper 2,5$ on the street. Consider selling it 15¢ or 20¢. Of course, it is a risk to take, because your subscriber base might start to decline, but on the other hand you’ll get more and more pay-per-article customers who would never have become subscribers anyways…
The Winnipeg Free Press started last april a new pay-per-article paywall, you can read the first results of this initiative after 6 weeks here on niemanlab website. The problem with that model is that you have to register and create an account on every single news site you want to read.
Blendle, a Dutch company is offering a pay-per-article in their country, and soon in Germany, and seem to be very successful doing that. The good thing with Blendle is that their users have access to a wide selection of articles from most of the newspapers of the country, so you’re not stuck to one source of information…
Of course, there are still some people reluctant to the pay-per-article model, this post from Will Federman got 100 likes…
…this might not be the easiest short term choice for news companies, but developping a value market for news online, article by article, post by post, is the best solution for the readers who will have access to all the content that is created and who will pay a fair market price for it, 2¢, 5¢, 10¢, 25¢, 79¢… based on the type of content and the source. It is also going to be a good solution for the news producers who are giving away a lot of free content now in the hope that the readers will eventually subscribe…
Don’t get stopped by the subscription model, go unlimited by paying for the news you’re consuming!
