Even while digital publication has gone a long way since the early days of the internet, one difficulty persists: how to commercialize content. Traditional newspapers and online magazines have both experimented with alternative business methods. Micropayments have recently returned as a viable alternative to advertising and paywalls, pushing publishers to go beyond the paywall.

A micropayment is an eCommerce transaction in which a small payment is made in exchange for an online service, a piece of digital material, or the download of an application. These “a la carte” purchases must be less than a certain amount, usually $1, to qualify as micropayments.

History

Micropayments are not a new concept. Online publishers have been experimenting with ways to charge consumers tiny amounts of money for fragmented material since the mid-1990s. When early prototypes failed, publishers who made it through the industry’s transformation to the Internet devised new income structures. The majority of publishers have chosen to rely completely on digital advertising for revenue. From 2006 to 2014, the newspaper business lost an estimated $30 billion in advertising income as a result of this arrangement. Publishers have to change yet again as a result of updated search engine algorithms and the rise of disruptive adverts. Metered paywalls, freemium systems, and hard paywalls followed, all requiring paid subscriptions for content access.

Pay-As-You-Go

Users are charged for each purchase they make in this system, resulting in few transactions for each item of content. According to a 2011 Stanford research, the pay-as-you-go approach actually provides an “a la carte” consumer experience, allowing people to pay for the material they desire right away. While retaining a customer’s credit card information may encourage impulse purchases, publishers may be wary of this strategy due to the one-time fees associated with each transaction.

Prepay

Users pay for content access in advance via gift cards, digital currency, or credits under a prepay model. Subscriptions can also be purchased in advance. Prepaying will eliminate the transaction costs associated with the pay-as-you-go model, but publishers will need a more robust eCommerce system to track credits spent and remaining. Visit 소액결제현금화 to know more.

Postpay

This concept combines multiple transactions into a single charge. Multiple little sales are eliminated, saving publishers money on transaction costs. This necessitates an eCommerce system that can either aggregate several small transactions or handles a single small payment. The iTunes system, for example, is a monthly subscription service that allows users to pay for many songs, television series, and/or movies.

Companies can also monetize an untapped market by using a micropayment system: casual readers who read a few articles here and there but aren’t engaged enough in the material to justify paying for a monthly or annual subscription. Fans of this type of scheme also think that charging a tiny fee for all content relieves publishers of the stress of relying on digital advertising and “advertorial” pieces, allowing them to focus on producing high-quality, useful, and fascinating content rather than appeasing advertisers.