Comments on: Micropayments for news

By: More On Micropayment Games | newsplay.org

More On Micropayment Games | newsplay.org — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 07:34:18 +0000

[...] assumed concepts about newspapers talking about micropayments moreso lately. Joel Kramer’s article from the Nieman Lab and Clay Shirkey’s thoughts from 2000 are good background [...]

By: Bankruptcies: What kind of changes will they force on newspapers? » Nieman Journalism Lab » Pushing to the Future of Journalism

Tue, 24 Feb 2009 16:55:47 +0000

[...] to find solutions. But there are opportunities in the longer run, I believe, for an innovative two-way micropayment model.) This entry was written by Martin Langeveld, posted on February 24, 2009 at 11:54 am, and [...]

By: robert ivan

robert ivan — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:22:45 +0000

You may be interested in my podcast regarding newspaper micropayments a la videogames and videogame console manufacturers.

Podcast – Video Game Revenue Models To Save The New York Times?

http://www.metaprinter.com/?p=1622

By: MichaelJ

MichaelJ — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:12:43 +0000

Martin,
It’s very interesting approach. I needs some mulling time to see what I think.

I the meanwhile, I wonder what anyone might think of the following:

Itunes breaks even for Apple. The real money is selling hardware. They just did a deal to charge for different levels of service.

So, it seems to me it would make sense for levels of service for newspapers. Read the paper for free, pay a subscription to get it automatically delivered to my kindle, pay a one time charge or a subscription to get access to columnists. Access in this case means, you have a reasonable expectation that they will respond to at least some of the blog posts.

Then while that is rolling nicely along, the paper harvests the data from the web interactions to identify stuff that viewers might want to purchase.

Consider that wal-mart is building it’s own TV channel in the stores to reach their customers. Given the intellectual power at the good newspapers why not really focus on what is probably now a peripheral business.

The NYTimes does a book on Obama. Released on Presdent’s day through the publishing channels. My bet is that if they used their own website, it would already be on their own best sellers list. Plus they get to keep all the excess value they were giving to the distributor.

I keep turning this over and over, and can’t figure out why it wouldn’t work.

Any thoughts?

By: Martin Langeveld

Martin Langeveld — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:34:35 +0000

Thanks Tim — agreed, that problem is just “for now,” and should not hold back e-readers from pay-per-click (or get-paid-per-click) down the road.

By: Tim Windsor

Tim Windsor — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 14:23:14 +0000

You write:

“One problem with this vision is that the Kindle and other e-readers are, for now, one-way content downloading devices that don’t send back data that could be used in a pay-per-click micropayment system.”

While it’s hardly sophisticated enough at this point, one of the genius bits of The Kindle is its always-on EVDO network, Whispernet. Although Kindle itself is not even close to being optimized for a two-way experience, there’s already some structure in place, along with intelligent pricing (seemingly free — baked into the device up-front cost) of the wireless access.

Some of the groundwork for what you’re describing has been laid.