So you see an intriguing headline for an article on your favorite sports team on, let's say ESPN.com for instance, but it's on their premium content section that's for subscribers only. But you don't want to have to pay $14.99 a year to subscribe to ESPN.com just to be able to read only one article!
That's where micropayments come in handy for both visitors and content providers. Micropayments would allow that visitor the ability to access that premium content article for only a couple pennies without having to commit to a subscription they don't want, or allow them to customize their content around their favorite sports team for a lot less money than the regular subscription rate, and it allows content providers the ability to still be able to make money from their premium content by providing it to their visitors on an ala carte' basis. Everybody's happy!
What that means is, as websites become more complex, the felixibility of offering a more customizable visitor experience increase dramatically. This will allow visitors to control their visitor experience as opposed to the content provider dictating the experience.
And these days, it's getting more and more expensive to create and maintain a website, and like the days of the backyard mechanic, where anyone could fix their own car with a couple wrenches and a screwdriver, to where now you can't even change the air filter without having to hook your car up to a diagnostics machine, websites are becoming the same way. The days of just slapping together a website with Dreamweaver or writing your HTML on wordpad, the uploading it to the web are dying too. Visitors are demanding more sophisticated content and more sophisticated and interactive delivery methods like Flash, CSS, interactive video, etc., all of which cost money to create and maintain. So, it will be just as important for websites to have the ability to monetize their content as it will be for the visitor to be able to customize their visitor experience. It's a symbiotic relationship that will only grow more iinterdependent as time goes on.
Content providors are going to have to change to keep up, or be left behind.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Cool! Another contribution!!
A very special thanks goes out to my good friend Lee Mentzos for a $200 contribution! Thanks bud, I truly appreciate the support!
Now you get a sketch and a cartoon print! I'll get those to you in the next week or so. Thanks again Lee! : )
Okay folks, we're slowly getting the ball rolling, let's keep it going! Even little contributions are awesome, so even if you can only afford $5 or $10 that's okay, every little bit helps and is appreciated.
Now you get a sketch and a cartoon print! I'll get those to you in the next week or so. Thanks again Lee! : )
Okay folks, we're slowly getting the ball rolling, let's keep it going! Even little contributions are awesome, so even if you can only afford $5 or $10 that's okay, every little bit helps and is appreciated.
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
The difficulties of pricing content and creating value for website visitors
As micropayments are integrated into Internet content and people decide what should remain free content and what should be paid content, another important factor will have to be decided on.... pricing content.
Initially, in the excitement to try and make their fortune with micropayments, I think a lot of content providers are going to overprice their content, causing sticker shock to a lot of web surfers, and inadvertently slow the integration of micropayments on to the Internet. Yet, once they notice that no one is visiting their websites, they will probably adjust their prices to a more reasonable level, but it will probably take some experimentation and trial and error before content prices settle down to uniform prices across the Internet.
The good news is that it will be the web surfers that determine the value of content by voting with their wallets. As it is, people are not going to be overly excited about having to pay for content that just yesterday they were getting for free, but if they are going to have to pay for content, they're going to expect quality content at reasonable prices. And if the prices are too high, they'll go to websites that offer the content they want at a price they're willing to pay.
From the content provider, it's going to be a combination of experimentation and common sense when it comes to pricing content. Really, it comes down to, if you're the websurfer, what are you willing to pay to read a newspaper article, or watch a video, or download a sewing pattern? Chances are it's not very much, maybe a couple cents, but that's okay, because the lower you can keep your prices, the better, because now you're making money every time someone accesses that content, whereas before you were only getting a 2 or 3% click through rate on your website ads. In the long run, volume of clicks is going to add up a lot faster than what you would have made on ads.
As the old saying goes, "Something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it." which holds true for internet content as well as virtual goods. But convenience of access and quality of content will play just as much of a role as price when it comes to how willingly people will switch over to a monetized internet. As more websites add micropayments to their content, and people get used to paying for content on an ala carte' basis, it will create a fierce competition among websites to get the best content, offer the best value to their visitors, and give them incentive to return.
As the free content internet disappears, so will free visitors and contributors. If people are going to have to pay for content, as a content providor, you're going to have to offer more cutomizeable content delivery options to your visitors, whether that's per-click access or day long subscriptions that would offer full access to content for the day, or other creative methods that give the visitors the ability to customize their experience.
iTunes has proved that people will pay for content if they know it's coming from a trusted source, is virus-free, legal, and convenient. Going from a free internet to a pay internet will be like going from trying to find music with Napster, to iTunes. With Napster you had to dig around to find what you wanted, which was sometimes very difficult, if not impossible, worry about whether it was infected with viruses, deal with slow downloads if only a couple people were seeding the song, among other things. To say the least it was a huge hassle!
Then iTunes comes along and offers those same songs for only 99 cents, virus free, easy to download, and legal! Pretty quickly people figured out that it was worth 99 cents to posess a song legally then deal with all the hassles of Napster. Now iTunes is the accepted way to get music on the internet.
That's exactly how a monetized internet would work too.
If people know that by paying a couple cents to access your content that they are getting a guarantee of virus-free, legal, and convenient access to that content that isn't going to destroy their hard drive, they're going to be much more willing to pay for that content. But as a content providor, you need to balance the price of that content with the value that you provide your visitors so it's a win-win situation for everyone. If people feel like they're being cheated or not getting value for their money, they will just go somewhere else, which in time will drive the bad websites off the web and let the quality websites rise to the top.
Overall, it will create a more competitive, quality, internet that in the long run will create a better user experience, and higher quality content.
Initially, in the excitement to try and make their fortune with micropayments, I think a lot of content providers are going to overprice their content, causing sticker shock to a lot of web surfers, and inadvertently slow the integration of micropayments on to the Internet. Yet, once they notice that no one is visiting their websites, they will probably adjust their prices to a more reasonable level, but it will probably take some experimentation and trial and error before content prices settle down to uniform prices across the Internet.
The good news is that it will be the web surfers that determine the value of content by voting with their wallets. As it is, people are not going to be overly excited about having to pay for content that just yesterday they were getting for free, but if they are going to have to pay for content, they're going to expect quality content at reasonable prices. And if the prices are too high, they'll go to websites that offer the content they want at a price they're willing to pay.
From the content provider, it's going to be a combination of experimentation and common sense when it comes to pricing content. Really, it comes down to, if you're the websurfer, what are you willing to pay to read a newspaper article, or watch a video, or download a sewing pattern? Chances are it's not very much, maybe a couple cents, but that's okay, because the lower you can keep your prices, the better, because now you're making money every time someone accesses that content, whereas before you were only getting a 2 or 3% click through rate on your website ads. In the long run, volume of clicks is going to add up a lot faster than what you would have made on ads.
As the old saying goes, "Something is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it." which holds true for internet content as well as virtual goods. But convenience of access and quality of content will play just as much of a role as price when it comes to how willingly people will switch over to a monetized internet. As more websites add micropayments to their content, and people get used to paying for content on an ala carte' basis, it will create a fierce competition among websites to get the best content, offer the best value to their visitors, and give them incentive to return.
As the free content internet disappears, so will free visitors and contributors. If people are going to have to pay for content, as a content providor, you're going to have to offer more cutomizeable content delivery options to your visitors, whether that's per-click access or day long subscriptions that would offer full access to content for the day, or other creative methods that give the visitors the ability to customize their experience.
iTunes has proved that people will pay for content if they know it's coming from a trusted source, is virus-free, legal, and convenient. Going from a free internet to a pay internet will be like going from trying to find music with Napster, to iTunes. With Napster you had to dig around to find what you wanted, which was sometimes very difficult, if not impossible, worry about whether it was infected with viruses, deal with slow downloads if only a couple people were seeding the song, among other things. To say the least it was a huge hassle!
Then iTunes comes along and offers those same songs for only 99 cents, virus free, easy to download, and legal! Pretty quickly people figured out that it was worth 99 cents to posess a song legally then deal with all the hassles of Napster. Now iTunes is the accepted way to get music on the internet.
That's exactly how a monetized internet would work too.
If people know that by paying a couple cents to access your content that they are getting a guarantee of virus-free, legal, and convenient access to that content that isn't going to destroy their hard drive, they're going to be much more willing to pay for that content. But as a content providor, you need to balance the price of that content with the value that you provide your visitors so it's a win-win situation for everyone. If people feel like they're being cheated or not getting value for their money, they will just go somewhere else, which in time will drive the bad websites off the web and let the quality websites rise to the top.
Overall, it will create a more competitive, quality, internet that in the long run will create a better user experience, and higher quality content.
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Micropayments: The next evolution of the Internet
The Problem:
As the Internet becomes more sophisticated, people are demanding more and more from it, whether that's access to information, entertainment and social networking, gaming, forums, video and photo sharing, online banking, stock trading, and many other things that haven't been thought of yet.
But in turn, the Internet is demanding just as much back from you in the form of your time, by making you sit through commercials before watching a video, or wasting your time closing pop up ads over and over before being able to access the content you wanted, or having you give access to your personal information, friends lists, or other information, which is then sold to data mining companies or used to target advertising to your interests, making someone, somewhere a lot of money!
The point is, the Internet is not free anymore. You're paying for it one way or another and it's only going to get worse, more intrusive, and harder to access what you want on the Internet. Content providers are looking for any way they can to make money from their content, and up to now advertising and data mining have been the most lucrative forms of generating income. And they figure, the more hoops they can get you to jump through before giving you access to the content you want, or the more information they can squeeze out of you, the more money they make.
The Solution:
Monetize the Internet with micropayments.
So how are micropayments going to make the Internet better and not worse? Well, you've heard the expression "Vote with your wallet"? If a micropayment system is put in place where people have to pay for content on an ala carte' basis like 2 cents to access a news article, or 3 cents to read a comic, etc., a couple things are going to happen.
The first thing that's going to happen is that websites are going to be much more competitive with each other to attract visitors, which will cause them to be more sensitive to their visitors needs, offer more options, and offer better content. Just like with brick and mortar stores, the customer will be king because now there's real money on the line, whereas with free Internet it's a numbers game of getting a lot of traffic so maybe 2 or 3% of your visitors will click on your banner ads and get you a penny or two. Now 90% of your visitors are potential income, and getting a penny or two from 90% of your visitors compared to only 2 or 3% before is a huge income leap!
But, it comes with a catch. If web surfers have to start shelling out their hard-earned money for Internet content, even if it's only a penny here and a penny there, they're going to be a lot more discriminating about who they give that penny too! They're not going to put up with the same abuse of being bombarded by advertising or jumping through hoops to be able to access content that they did before. They will want easily accessible, high quality content, at a reasonable price. And if you don't provide it, someone else will. And it's those websites that will become the winners on the new Internet.
One of the most exciting aspects of having an ala carte' Internet is breathing new life back into newspapers and magazines that have moved online, especially small local newspapers that have a hard time securing advertisers. Not everyone wants to get all their news from large news conglomerates, and most people are still interested in what's going on in their communities, which is where local newspapers play an important role. Micropayments would give small newspapers the ability to generate income from their articles and features and even their archives that they wouldn't have been able to do before. Same goes with magazines, especially niche magazines that are about unique subjects, that may have a small but dedicated following.
Who else can benefit from an ala carte' Internet ? Cartoonists and animators, independent filmmakers, musicians, people that make tutorials, sell knitting patterns, writers, bloggers, porn sites, poets, game developers, app developers, betting picks, niche websites, the list is almost unlimited.
As I go along, I detail how different people can use micropayments with their content, and why it will make for a better Internet in the long run.
Laters!
Geoff
As the Internet becomes more sophisticated, people are demanding more and more from it, whether that's access to information, entertainment and social networking, gaming, forums, video and photo sharing, online banking, stock trading, and many other things that haven't been thought of yet.
But in turn, the Internet is demanding just as much back from you in the form of your time, by making you sit through commercials before watching a video, or wasting your time closing pop up ads over and over before being able to access the content you wanted, or having you give access to your personal information, friends lists, or other information, which is then sold to data mining companies or used to target advertising to your interests, making someone, somewhere a lot of money!
The point is, the Internet is not free anymore. You're paying for it one way or another and it's only going to get worse, more intrusive, and harder to access what you want on the Internet. Content providers are looking for any way they can to make money from their content, and up to now advertising and data mining have been the most lucrative forms of generating income. And they figure, the more hoops they can get you to jump through before giving you access to the content you want, or the more information they can squeeze out of you, the more money they make.
The Solution:
Monetize the Internet with micropayments.
So how are micropayments going to make the Internet better and not worse? Well, you've heard the expression "Vote with your wallet"? If a micropayment system is put in place where people have to pay for content on an ala carte' basis like 2 cents to access a news article, or 3 cents to read a comic, etc., a couple things are going to happen.
The first thing that's going to happen is that websites are going to be much more competitive with each other to attract visitors, which will cause them to be more sensitive to their visitors needs, offer more options, and offer better content. Just like with brick and mortar stores, the customer will be king because now there's real money on the line, whereas with free Internet it's a numbers game of getting a lot of traffic so maybe 2 or 3% of your visitors will click on your banner ads and get you a penny or two. Now 90% of your visitors are potential income, and getting a penny or two from 90% of your visitors compared to only 2 or 3% before is a huge income leap!
But, it comes with a catch. If web surfers have to start shelling out their hard-earned money for Internet content, even if it's only a penny here and a penny there, they're going to be a lot more discriminating about who they give that penny too! They're not going to put up with the same abuse of being bombarded by advertising or jumping through hoops to be able to access content that they did before. They will want easily accessible, high quality content, at a reasonable price. And if you don't provide it, someone else will. And it's those websites that will become the winners on the new Internet.
One of the most exciting aspects of having an ala carte' Internet is breathing new life back into newspapers and magazines that have moved online, especially small local newspapers that have a hard time securing advertisers. Not everyone wants to get all their news from large news conglomerates, and most people are still interested in what's going on in their communities, which is where local newspapers play an important role. Micropayments would give small newspapers the ability to generate income from their articles and features and even their archives that they wouldn't have been able to do before. Same goes with magazines, especially niche magazines that are about unique subjects, that may have a small but dedicated following.
Who else can benefit from an ala carte' Internet ? Cartoonists and animators, independent filmmakers, musicians, people that make tutorials, sell knitting patterns, writers, bloggers, porn sites, poets, game developers, app developers, betting picks, niche websites, the list is almost unlimited.
As I go along, I detail how different people can use micropayments with their content, and why it will make for a better Internet in the long run.
Laters!
Geoff
Sunday, August 15, 2010
WooHoo! Getting the ball rolling, my first $100 contributor!
A very special shout out and thank you to my first $100 contributor, good friend, and amazing artist, Margret Goh!! Thank you Margret for believing in this project and for your support, it's truly appreciated. : )
Friday, August 13, 2010
My first contributor!!
Yay!! I got my first contribution today from one of my cartooning buddies Nelson Dewey! Thanks Nelson, I appreciate it bud! This is your BIG PUBLIC THANK YOU! LOL!
Thursday, August 12, 2010
Why am I doing this?
Why is a cartoonist trying to patent a micropayment system, and what does one have to do with the other?!
Actually, it's not as far off from each other as you would think. Ever since the Internet got started, cartoonists have been looking for a way to make money from their cartoons, and not just a few cents a month because someone accidentally clicked on one of your Google ads on your website. No, I mean like every time someone clicks on one of your cartoons and reads it, you make a penny or two, directly supporting you, the cartoonist, and giving that cartoonist the opportunity to actually make enough money from their cartoons on the Internet to make some decent income from their efforts, and maybe even make enough to go part time or full time with it. Wouldn't that be cool?!
I know, I know, what does this have to do with you and other non-cartoonists? Bear with me, I'm getting there, I just have to explain a little background first.
Anyhow, so through the years cartoonists have tried just about every form of trying to make money from their content known to man, whether it's a PayPal donation button (begging button), subscriptions, selling merchandise with their cartoons on them, Google adsense, banner ads from website sponsors, and, even micropayments.... You name it, cartoonists have tried it! But NONE of these methods supply a guaranteed income each time someone reads one of your toons. And to make any money from ads, you have to have a lot of website traffic, and let's face it, most of us aren't cranking in millions of hits a month.
So after mulling this problem over for years, it pretty much came down to micropayments being the only sensible method. But all the micropayment companies that had been tried so far had failed because of two primary reasons.
The first reason for their failure is credit card transaction fees. Micropayments by their very nature are purchases of very small amounts, typically for fractions of a penny up to about $1, but usually average only a few pennies. Most credit card transaction fees cost more than that, so it’s not practical for credit card companies to process micropayment purchases. Therefore, until a micropayment system can make it practical for the credit card companies to process small transactions, but still make the price website visitors pay for content reasonable, any internet micropayment system will fail.
The second reason micropayment systems have failed up to now is because of the prevailing attitude that everything on the internet is free, which has forced website owners and content providers to rely heavily on advertising models like Google’s Adsense, commercials before videos, or subscription models to generate revenue.
But for small or niche websites that don’t attract as many visitors as busier websites, or have the ability to attract large advertisers to pay for ad space on their website, their ability to make any money from their content is dramatically reduced.
While at the same time, over the last couple years, the recession has forced many newspapers and magazines and other niche publications to either fold or go online to try and survive, yet there are only so many advertising dollars available to go around, and those dollars usually go to the most popular sites, leaving the small local papers and niche publications and specialty sites out in the cold.
The solution is to monetize the internet and balance the playing field, giving small websites the same ability to generate revenue from their content as the large websites. This will create more competition for website visitors, which will encourage content providers to compete for the best content, keep content fresh and up to date, allow quality sites to become successful and bad sites to disappear, creating a much healthier internet.
And as the internet becomes more sophisticated, users are demanding more options and choices and the ability to customize those choices, which is something a blanket subscription model or advertising model doesn’t allow for, but micropayments do.
So what's the point? Who besides cartoonists would have a use for ala carte' internet? Well, anyone that has valuable content they would like to sell on a per view usage, such as:
Actually, it's not as far off from each other as you would think. Ever since the Internet got started, cartoonists have been looking for a way to make money from their cartoons, and not just a few cents a month because someone accidentally clicked on one of your Google ads on your website. No, I mean like every time someone clicks on one of your cartoons and reads it, you make a penny or two, directly supporting you, the cartoonist, and giving that cartoonist the opportunity to actually make enough money from their cartoons on the Internet to make some decent income from their efforts, and maybe even make enough to go part time or full time with it. Wouldn't that be cool?!
I know, I know, what does this have to do with you and other non-cartoonists? Bear with me, I'm getting there, I just have to explain a little background first.
Anyhow, so through the years cartoonists have tried just about every form of trying to make money from their content known to man, whether it's a PayPal donation button (begging button), subscriptions, selling merchandise with their cartoons on them, Google adsense, banner ads from website sponsors, and, even micropayments.... You name it, cartoonists have tried it! But NONE of these methods supply a guaranteed income each time someone reads one of your toons. And to make any money from ads, you have to have a lot of website traffic, and let's face it, most of us aren't cranking in millions of hits a month.
So after mulling this problem over for years, it pretty much came down to micropayments being the only sensible method. But all the micropayment companies that had been tried so far had failed because of two primary reasons.
The first reason for their failure is credit card transaction fees. Micropayments by their very nature are purchases of very small amounts, typically for fractions of a penny up to about $1, but usually average only a few pennies. Most credit card transaction fees cost more than that, so it’s not practical for credit card companies to process micropayment purchases. Therefore, until a micropayment system can make it practical for the credit card companies to process small transactions, but still make the price website visitors pay for content reasonable, any internet micropayment system will fail.
The second reason micropayment systems have failed up to now is because of the prevailing attitude that everything on the internet is free, which has forced website owners and content providers to rely heavily on advertising models like Google’s Adsense, commercials before videos, or subscription models to generate revenue.
But for small or niche websites that don’t attract as many visitors as busier websites, or have the ability to attract large advertisers to pay for ad space on their website, their ability to make any money from their content is dramatically reduced.
While at the same time, over the last couple years, the recession has forced many newspapers and magazines and other niche publications to either fold or go online to try and survive, yet there are only so many advertising dollars available to go around, and those dollars usually go to the most popular sites, leaving the small local papers and niche publications and specialty sites out in the cold.
The solution is to monetize the internet and balance the playing field, giving small websites the same ability to generate revenue from their content as the large websites. This will create more competition for website visitors, which will encourage content providers to compete for the best content, keep content fresh and up to date, allow quality sites to become successful and bad sites to disappear, creating a much healthier internet.
And as the internet becomes more sophisticated, users are demanding more options and choices and the ability to customize those choices, which is something a blanket subscription model or advertising model doesn’t allow for, but micropayments do.
So what's the point? Who besides cartoonists would have a use for ala carte' internet? Well, anyone that has valuable content they would like to sell on a per view usage, such as:
- Newspaper articles
- Magazine articles
- Playing online games
- Archive access
- Web cartoons and comics
- How-to articles
- Tutorials
- Short stories and poetry
- Pornography
- Videos, - TV shows, music videos, tutorial videos, video sharing sites
- Informational articles
- Entertainment features
- Social networking sites
- Arts and Crafts patterns and instructions
- Website memberships or access to special areas on the website
- Purchasing downloads
Okay, here it comes, the counter argument I hear the most... "But that will create an internet where I'm going to be nickel and dimed to death!" or "That will make the internet only for the rich!" Yes and no to both of those arguments.
As far as being nickel and dimed to death, yes, most people will tell you that they don’t want a pay internet, but it already is a pay internet and the currency is your time. It is getting harder and harder to access content without having to jump through some kind of advertising hoop or another before you can access that content, whether that’s having to watch a commercial before viewing a video or annoying pop-up ads that you have to close again and again. Monetizing the internet with an effective micropayment system that has you pay only for the content you use will cut back on unnecessary advertising, while directly supporting the content providers and websites you visit, which in turn will give them the capital to expand, grow, and provide better content.
Think about it, on YouTube, would you rather pay 2 cents to bypass the 30 second commercial and go directly to the video, or spend 30 seconds of your time each time you want to watch a video? I don't know about you, but my time is more than worth 2 cents for 30 seconds! But on the other hand, you'll still have the option of sitting through the commercial if you like. Adding the option of a micropayment to content isn't a all or nothing deal, it can be a supplement to traditional ads.
I'm not advocating monetizing every click on the internet either, no way! All I want to do is level the playing field, so everyone with a website, big or small, has the same chance to fail or succeed as the other guy.
Thanks for your support!
Laters!
Geoff
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