How Micropayments Can Save Online Journalism
The internet has both democratised access to information and lowered the barriers to produce and distribute it. The consequence is that information is abundant, competition between publishers is fierce and it’s harder than ever to make readers pay for news.
To make things worse, publishers have tried to compensate for the decrease in print revenue by introducing variants of digital subscriptions. In other words, they have just transferred their old business model to the internet era. While subscription revenue might be the secure and preferred choice for publishers, it demonstrates a strong misunderstanding of reader preference (see bar chart).
If digitisation has shown one thing, it is that only the companies catering to their users’ needs thrive and survive. In digital publishing, this translates to understanding that only a tiny minority of people want to commit to one particular newspaper and pay a monthly subscription for it. The modern reader discovers articles shared by peers on Social Media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook and will read anything that triggers his interest no matter which publication the article is from.
The issue is that most publishers’ sale strategies are too aggressive too soon, not necessarily that readers are not willing to pay for good content. How can a reader make an informed decision about a site’s content if they can’t access it without entering a subscription right away? Most publishers try to address this problem by offering the first month free, but that again demands a lot of commitment. Time commitment aside, signing up and putting a credit card on file is a tedious path that repels many readers.
How can micropayments help?
What if readers could pay small sums (say €0.50) for an individual article with one click? This is the new world of possibilities made possible by Blockchain technology and its ability to process and settle payments, at much lower costs than traditional payment providers relying on legacy banking infrastructure.
At SatoshiPay, we have built such a solution. On every publisher’s site that has integrated our solution, a browser wallet appears (try it here for free) and all a user needs to do is purchase some credits. Then, content can be paid with one click on every SatoshiPay compatible site. No log-in or sign-up by the user is required!
By minimising the friction to pay for premium content, the chances that a reader, coming from a random platform to a publisher site, will actually pay for an article will increase tremendously. And this is exactly how micropayments can help publishers boost their revenue.
Contrary to popular belief, micropayments do not need to substitute a publisher’s subscription offer. Actually we think that the two can complement each other quite well. Imagine a Paywall model where first-time visitors can choose between entering a subscription or purchasing the article individually. Readers choosing the second option would likely have been missed opportunities if they had faced a conventional paywall. By making it easy for those readers to pay for a single article however, an additional revenue is generated for the publisher.
The catch then becomes to convert these paying readers into subscribers. Having repeatedly demonstrated willingness to pay for content, these readers turn into very interesting leads. Publishers can target them and offer a free subscription trial, say after the 10th article purchased. At this point, the once-stray reader is now familiarised with the site’s content, has trust in the publisher and really sees the benefit in having a subscription instead of paying for each article individually.
Thus, there are greater chances now that a reader will try out an offered subscription trial than when he first arrived at the site.
Conclusion
If used correctly, micropayments can serve as an invaluable up-selling tool by publishers to strengthen the subscription conversion funnel. If you’re a publisher or paywall provider interested to learn more about our micropayment solution please get in touch with us. Not convinced yet? Try out for yourself how convenient micropayments are.
