Forum Moderators: goodroi
Google is planning to roll out a system of micropayments within the next year and hopes that newspapers will use it as they look for new ways to charge users for their content.The revelation was made in a document that Google sent to the Newspaper Association of America in response to a request for paid-content proposals that the association sent to several technology companies.
The Google document, which was first publicized by the Nieman Journalism Lab, indicates that the micropayment system will be an extension of Google Checkout, a payment system that Google rolled out in 2006 and positioned as a competitor to eBay’s PayPal service, the leading system for online payments.
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Google, which has long relied on advertising for the overwhelming majority of its revenue, said that it believed that paid content could be a good complement to advertising.
"Micropayments for the poor . . Micropayments for the poor . ."
I've been waiting for this for a long time and if anyone can make it work, Google can.
What he meant was without ad revenue or financial support there would be no newsroom.
Seeing the "news media" that way for the first time I found myself both crestfallen (I started college as a virtuous journalism major) and jolted awake.
Subscriptions have always been a form of micropayments or aggregate installments, micropayments by another name. Unlike micropayments subscriptions are a system without the added overhead of processing each payment and without an intermediary taking a share of every transaction and making notes about what news "sells".
I guess "news by micropayment" is a bit like the transition from bands selling LPs/albums to selling their single hit on ITunes? But a big part of the revolt against the album was the fact that so many albums were built of mostly filler with 1 or 2 hits.
Is their a parallel truth for the news? Must I pay for the obits section or the news about political blunders? If I don't value such news, then why not have a subscription to the sports section only or the business news section only . . and forget micropayments?
In a news-micropayment world are newswires king?
There's likely a place for micropayments in the news income stream, but will micropayments scale "for sustaining the newsroom", especially at the small town or county news level? Doubtful.
[edited by: Webwork at 3:10 pm (utc) on Sep. 10, 2009]
The idea has been out there for ages, and many have tried. I've heard of token systems, credit systems, systems that aggregate transactions using false currencies; but none of these caught on. Perhaps for good reason... can you pay your mortgage with Linden dollars or Booyah Bucks?
Right now, to charge someone $0.25 on PayPal, you pay a $0.25 service fee. The buyer pays out the money, the seller gets nothing.
Either micro-charges or some sort of a royalties clearing house arrangement like ASCAP might be needed to make this a sufficiently transparent setup to work.
I remember many years ago, before Google went public, hearing Sergey and Larry speculate on the possibility of a very modest annual fee to provide web users with access to all content and at the same time compensate content creators.
There's a question of whether, on the web, micropayments would work for all content providers, or only those with a certain degree of reputation... and how the arrangement would work. I'd hate to be paying for every link I've clicked, or for browsing to find an article I want to read.
Right now, to charge someone $0.25 on PayPal, you pay a $0.25 service fee. The buyer pays out the money, the seller gets nothing.
paypal offers a small-payment version.
This is very interesting indeed.
It can only work, though, if the process of making the transaction is extremely easy (doesn't require filling out forms each time or clicking through multiple screens), and if a large enough number of people starts using it so that a critical mass is reached. Of course, there are numerous roadblocks to work out. But who better than Google to attempt to overcome them?
[webmasterworld.com...]
For a micro-advertising scheme (like AdSense) to become popular with publishers, Google will need to micro-pay. What?
People will not be paying even a penny for news
perhaps. but I believe many people would click a "pay 25˘ to hide popups" or "75˘ to uncensor the naughty picture" - it'd be an impulse buy, like the candy racks at the grocery checkout aisle.
And don't forget
"Game over. Insert 25˘ to continue"
It can only work, though, if the process of making the transaction is extremely easy...
This is something I very much want to work. I think it's extremely important that newspapers survive. I'm also very careful about my privacy... and I try not to search or surf logged in, etc.
Obviously, for this to work, one will need to be logged in. It's a hard choice. I'd probably choose to give them the damned information, but it's not a choice I like.
It can only work, though, if the process of making the transaction is extremely easy...
Even then, will it work for news sites? News is a commodity, and so is commentary.
Micropayments might have a place on information sites (appliance-review sites, tech-support sites, or sources of medical information) that people visit only occasionally and only when they're looking for specific information that might be important to them at a given moment in time. But even then, I wonder how many people are willing to go back to the model of metered access (the equivalent of using CompuServe or AOL back in the 1980s and 1990s), whether they're paying for connect time or access to a Web site.
I think the "micropayments" proposal is an easy way for Google to kiss and make up the Rupert Murdochs of the world, but I doubt if it will go anywhere.
At a penny per visitor for news sites as well as message boards such as WebmasterWorld, this would mean probably 100X the profit of current PPC models (a few dollars CPM instead of a few pennies.)
This would eliminate a lot of scrapers because #1 they would have to pay and #2 they would have to identify themselves.
Eventually sites which charge would gain the reputation of being more trustworthy, because they have identified themselves officially to start accepting micro-payments. This is something phishing sites couldn't do.
Shoot, I'm looking forward to the day when everyone has to pay a penny per email sent. Spammers could never afford that, and my legitimate newsletters would no longer get caught in everyone's spam folders. Sure it would cost me some $$$, but the payoff would be big.
It's a big change, but I think it an obvious part of the natural evolution of the Internet. I'm rooting for Google on this one.
2. I wouldn't pay a penny to go to any forum, why should i pay to share my own experiences and knowledge?
3. I don't think charging for something gives any reputation. In fact, it seems very e-book scammy.
4. if there was ever a day i had to pay a penny for each email, i'd re-invent email to be free once again. I already pay for the servers, i already pay for the bandwidth, i already pay for the storage, maintenance and access to email.
I don't think its any natural evolution of the Internet period, i'd be rather disappointed if it became a pay to play market. In fact, it would just turn into one big prodigy or compuserve with google controlling it all. that is sickening to even think of ;)
I'm really surprised at the lack of enthusiasm being shown here.
There's plenty of enthusiasm for micropayments (at least on the selling side!).
But Google Checkout currently seems to be a local payments system that only supports merchants in the US (and UK?). Judging by their support forums, it seems to have the usual Google "hands off" attitude to support as well.
To be really useful, any micropayments solution needs to have a much wider spread of countries, currencies and languages, and proper end-consumer support.
second point - it will hopefully increase the competition among adwords advertisers = more ecmp for adsense publishers!
The world has needed a good, efficient micropayment system since day one.
I'm right there with you webwitch. I hope it works too. These are exciting times.
