

Forget Micropayments -- Here's a Far Better Idea for Monetizing Content - brand
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/columns/stopthepresses_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003940234

======
greyman
I think this is just another "micropayment dream", and will not work
ultimately. Internet just doesn't work this way.

The only thing I can imagine could save online newspapers is, that they will
become better and better in quality, that will attract many visitors, and the
website will survive by ads revenue.

IMHO the core problem is, that the World Wide Web was not created with the
intention that it should provide business opportunities. It was mainly
established for free exchange of information between scholars and scientists.

Later on, some people and companies discovered that Internet has monetization
potential and so the .com companies emerged. Some were successful, other
weren't. But nobody said every kind of business can survive on the Internet -
WWW has it own principles, and if you don't play by it's rules, you might not
survive. And, one of that core principles which lies in the very heart of WWW
is that information is passed for free. I don't think any company has the
power to change that.

------
jaxn
I will be interested to see how they keep people from gaming the system.

Once you get someone to support your site the goal will be to get them to
visit your site as many times as possible in a month. I think this will lead
to increased sensationalism and gimmicks.

Also, visits are typically delimited by a period of inactivity (say, 30
minutes). I can think of several ways off the top of my head that publishers
could manipulate that inactivity window to create additional visits (thus
increasing their slice of the pie).

It is an interesting idea, but as always, the devil is in the details.

~~~
ABrandt
Gaming this type of system is certainly possible, but I can identify a few
factors that would limit this.

For one, no matter how large "their slice of the pie" is, the publishers won't
make much if the user doesn't feel that the content is valuable. Thus, blogs
and what not will still be encouraged to deliver quality content to truly
increase earnings.

I agree, however, that basing payout on the number of visits to a "supported"
site is flawed. I could see myself supporting a site, forgetting that I did
so, and then end up paying much more than I had intended. No thanks.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
You only pay whatever you set your fixed monthly total Kachingle subscription
to be (say $10). The number of visits just allocates what _percentage_ of that
fee goes where. The idea is that once you decide to support a site, you don't
have to think about how to divvy up your support; it's based on your usage
patterns.

------
ieatpaste
This is basically the "pay what you like" monetization that Radiohead used -
60-65% paid nothing and the rest paid an average of $6 (30% of market price).
Personally, I feel that this is not sustainable.

Newspaper monetization could be in the form of customized filtering. While
many companies try to provide such a service, the quality isn't high enough
that someone would pay from it.

~~~
brand
How high does the quality have to be before the average user pays for it?

~~~
tomjen
The average user won't pay no matter how high the quality is if they can get
it for free otherwise.

~~~
Xichekolas
Maybe I'm not 'average', but I pay $80/yr for a subscription to the Economist
even though I can get all the articles free on their website.

Part of that is that I spend 12-15 hours a day on my computer for my job and
side projects... being able to go outside and read my news on paper is a
welcome break from that.

But the other part is that I find the reporting to be of generally high
quality and depth. I think the print media that is hurt the most by the
Internet are those with shorter stories and lots of ads in between. The
Internet does this bite-sized content extremely well, so traditional media
will have a hard time competing, but there is still demand for longer, in
depth content, which is (so far) best supplied by paid reporters.

------
antidaily
Kindle and its model fits into this discussion somehow. Where's the itunes of
publishing? I know it sounds silly to pay for something you'll read only once,
but perhaps if it was cheap enough and super convenient.

Many of us would pay for Hacker News - is that because of the variety of news
sources, the discussion, the community?

------
jay_kyburz
Yeah, I don't know why people a scrambling around for all these crazy systems.

The newspapers are just going to do the obvious, they will have free and
premium content with a monthly subscription.

The big media companies like Fairfax will bundle all kinds of premium content
under one subscription. I guess it will be like a pay tv model.

------
AndrewO
Well, it's better than per-click micropayments. I think most people are
willing to pay a set amount for news as a sort of utility as long as it goes
to the outlets they choose and they don't have to evaluate the payment with
each click.

From the newspaper's standpoint, they become mendicants, or worse... PBS or
NPR. I don't think that will sit well with many in the industry, but faced
with an inefficient, obsolete business model and eventual bankruptcy, the NPR-
ization of all media just might be their only option.

------
ryanwaggoner
Very interesting idea, but I don't think it will work on a commercial scale.
It's based on gratitude and goodwill from consumers who are used to getting
things for free. Many will pay and a few sites will make decent money, but the
majority of people won't see anything in it for them, as they can get the
content for free. Just like TipJoy (which I love), this seems geared more
towards hobbyists than serious businesses. Hope I'm wrong.

Also, this is an especially hard sell with the economy the way it is.

------
AndrewO
> But I do believe that the patented model Kachingle represents can work...

Given the In re Bilski, anyone have any ideas about the status of this patent?
My understanding was that process patents had to transform an article's state
or be bound to specific hardware (but I'm not an IP specialist).

------
Spyckie
Anyone reminded of those PBS pledge nights right after nature and NOVA?

------
lionhearted
I like making detailed comments on here, ideally supported by a personal
story, or a link to some science or history. But on this one - I just gotta
write that my gut says "not gonna work". Now, there's been lots of gut feeling
throughout history that something's "not gonna work" that did, in fact, work.
But this one - I'm thinking not.

Two reasons off the top of my head: Where's the value in signing up for
Kachingle? What do consumers get? Assuaging of guilt? If Kachingle negotiated
so that every Kachingle publisher had Kach-only (or otherwise paid only)
content, it could work as a giant "subscription fee to everything". But Kach
would need a lot of traction to get heavyweights like the NYT to make some
content only available to Kachingle users.

Second - privacy. I'm not Captain Uber Security online, but I don't want my
credit card and favorite reading online linked. I've seen too many companies
abuse user data to be excited about telling Kachingle/AMEX/whoever else
exactly what I like reading and my interests are. Ultra-targeted demographic
based advertisements all over the internet does not appeal to me.

------
ajkirwin
I think this is overlooking something important. I would never pay for access
to say, NYTimes.com or something.. because it doesn't give me what I want.

Data. Hard facts. I'd much prefer to pay to access something like AP's
newswire, where I can get a lot more salient information without having it
regurgitated by someone.

