Readers Want to Pay for News Online -- So Let Them If you've read my previous columns and blog posts on the topic of charging for non-niche news content on the Web, the above headline may seem odd. But there's a sizable number of readers of newspaper Web sites who WANT to pay for that news.
By
Steve Outing
(June 19, 2009) -- If you've read my previous columns and my blog posts on the topic of charging for non-niche news content on the web, the above headline may seem odd.
In fact, I remain opposed to newspaper publishers demanding payment for general news content on their Web sites. But there are a sizable number of readers of newspaper Web sites (indeed, news sites of all sorts) who WANT to pay for that news. Many have moved away from print and now prefer digital devices to consume the news, but they don't have a mechanism to pay -- yet.
But what's coming very soon is a wave of new services and payment technologies that, when deployed by Web site publishers, will allow those people who want to pay for news online to do so. Voluntarily. Because they recognize the value they're getting from the output of professional journalists and want to financially support it so that it will continue to be produced.
They'll be able to pay a dime (or less, or more) for a specific story. Or they can continually support specific Web publishers with no effort or "mental transactions" necessary. Or they'll support a group of publishers but get some "extras" from across the group of Web sites for being a supporter.
Of course, the percentage who pay online when not forced to will be modest. But if techniques can be used to increase the portion of online news users who choose to pitch in to the financial pot, then voluntary payments can become a credible additional revenue stream for news companies that publish online -- and help make up for the lesser advertising revenues that the Web can bring to a newspaper publisher.
Further, giving the news consumer multiple options for contributing should grow the pot of voluntarily given money, and that should be possible as soon as the new payment contribution systems roll out in the weeks and months ahead.
Different approaches, and motivators You may have noticed some new optional-payment services popping up recently. I wrote about one of the first to appear a few months ago, Kachingle, in a previous column. Now competitors to Kachingle are showing up, though each seems to take a slightly different angle. But all follow the same basic tenet: The user or reader is in control of whether or not to pay for online content or support a specific Web site, and is also in control of how much he/she will spend.
The publisher of the content is essentially out of the decision -- is a necessary concession in order for online news to take advantage of the benefits that can accrue from allowing content or "fair use" excerpts to be linked to or even travel freely around the Web, e-mail, social networks, blogs, news aggregators, news-specific search engines, and (of course) Google. That is, a continually growing online audience for a publisher's news made possible by many other players sending people to it, and monetization of that outweighs the loss in advertising revenue and institutional influence that's likely to occur if news gets locked down or barriers put in front of news consumers.
So let's run down some of the various initiatives offering "voluntary" options for getting online users to pay for news when they aren't forced to:
1. Kachingle : A voluntary network. Consumer agrees to regularly pay $5 a month (or another higher amount) to Kachingle in order to support "all" online news and content. As the "Kachingler" cruises the Web, he'll see Kachingle "medallions" on some news and other Web sites, and blogs. He'll click the medallion one time for any site or blog he wants to support financially, then his $5 a month (minus Kachingle's commission) will be divided up among his favorite sites and blogs based on the number of times he visited them during the last month. The Kachingle systems tracks it all and distributes money to participating web publishers and bloggers, ongoing.
An important component of Kachingle is its social network and social-promotion strategy. When you click a medallion to support a news site, your name is added to the public list of people who financially support the site (unless you opt to remain private). When a friend looks in on your Kachingle account, she'll see which sites and blogs you like enough to financially support, which may influence her to support some of the same sites. And when you click a medallion to financially support a specific site, your social network can be notified (via Facebook, Twitter, etc.), again providing a little social nudge for friends and colleagues to also join Kachingle and support online content.
2. Contenture : This service is similar in that an online user joins the Contenture network and pays a regular monthly fee (a minimum of $5.99 but can be higher if the member wishes), but the basis of the model is "freemium." Rather than choose which sites you like best, Contenture simply tracks the Web sites and blogs that you visit that are Contenture publisher members; your monthly payment is automatically divided among all the Contenture sites you visit, based on how many times you visit each month (minus Contenture's commission).
With Contenture, all participating Web sites or blogs get paid whenever a Contenture paying member visits. But unlike Kachingle's model, Contenture encourages publishers to offer something extra for Contenture members. For example, a Contenture member visiting a participating news site might see the site with banner ads turned off, while other visitors would see ads. A Contenture member might get priority access to news, or access to some special content or service that non-members would have to pay for. It's up to the publisher to decide what's premium.
The company also encourages publishers to promote its visitors joining the Contenture network, offering a bounty for sites that sign up new Contenture members.
There's a philosophical difference between Kachingle and Contenture: Kachingle wants to enable publishers to keep as much of their content free as they'd like; it is agnostic on the issue of whether a Web publisher should charge for special premium content or services or not, though the company's mission is to enable most web content to remain free. Contenture takes the approach that if you pay to be a Contenture network member, whenever you visit a participating Contenture site, you'll get access to something special that freeloaders will not. Of course, this carrot approach only works if the network of participating sites is big enough that the paying Contenture member frequently runs across extra goodies that he wouldn't have access to otherwise. The value early on may not be high. But as a member you will be supporting online content and news producers.
3. Inamoon : This small start-up calls its voluntary payment network "your all-access pass to global content." Still in early stages of development, Inamoon's model is similar to Contenture's in that the online user pays a regular monthly "Internet content fee" and that money is spread around all Inamoon participating sites based on the user's visits to those sites. Also like Contenture, it encourages most content on participating sites to be free, but supports restricting access to special or premium content to Inamoon paying members; they get to see the premium content on all Inamoon-partner sites, while freeloaders are blocked or asked to pay a fee.
One interesting difference is that 10% of the money from Inamoon members gets put in a "free pool" rather than divvied out to participating sites by tracked user behavior. The free-pool money is meant to provide an incentive for Web content publishers to keep their content free, so that even sites and blogs that want to keep all or nearly all of their content free (and not make it premium-access) can still earn money.
4. Payyattention : Now we get to a model that encourages -- but does not demand -- online users to pay a few cents to support a specific piece of content. A publisher using Payyattention will have a box embedded on each of its articles (likely at the end), asking for a donation from the reader if he/she liked the story enough to pay for it. The reader can ignore the request, or (once they've initially signed up for a Payyattention account) make a contribution with one click. The default price for a Web article is set by the publisher; 10 cents is a typical price that Payyattention founder Stephen Farrell, who left IBM Research where he was on the senior technical staff, says is small enough to encourage readers to click-donate when they like something. The reader also can click a "more ..." link to pay a larger amount to the article author if desired.
Unlike the voluntary monthly subscription models of Kachingle, Contenture and Inamoon, Payyattention asks that its reader-users put money into their accounts at will. That is, if you want to donate 10 cents because you like an article, there needs to be money in your Payyattention.com account to cover it.
So with Payyattention, the user is actively deciding whether or not to support something specific (news article, blog post, photo, video, comic, etc.), but the process is simple (one click; and if you change your mind or clicked by mistake, click again within 60 seconds to cancel the donation). With Kachingle, Contenture and Inamoon, the donations are more passive; the individual decides to support online content financially, then those services track the person's behavior and/or preferences and pay web publishers amounts that are automatically calculated.
One future scenario for Payyattention is really interesting, in my view: extending the ability to donate per-article beyond the originating site or blog.
As the system is introduced, the Payyattention donate boxes will be on specific pieces of content hosted by the originating publisher. If you see a blurb/excerpt about an article on someone else's blog, you'll get the chance to donate 10 cents for it only by clicking through to read the whole story on the originating publisher's site. If an article by Publisher A is syndicated and posted on Publisher B's Web site, there will be no way for the "B" reader to donate.
But in the future, Farrell is considering expanding the system's reach so that a Payyattention donate box could accompany a story or other content that is republished elsewhere (though that might require the cooperation of the republishing sites). This would be useful especially for a non-profit news site like ProPublica, for example, since it encourages other media to publish its investigative and enterprise reporting work. It also could be useful in instances where the Associated Press is distributing the work of non-profit investigative reporting entities to its members, which the AP announced this week that it will begin to do.
So, the author of an investigative piece by ProPublica could benefit by getting donations from readers of the article on lots of different Web sites. This could be a great way to support independent journalists who widely distribute their work. In the ProPublica example, the remote-site donation earnings could be assigned to the writer(s), or to ProPublica itself, or a combination.
Farrell says there are considerable security and other technical obstacles to attaching a Payyattention donate box to content as it flows away from the originating publisher's Web site. But it may be possible. I'll predict that if he or someone else pulls that off, the idea of "reader-supported media" will open up the opportunity for talented independent writers and content producers to make a living largely from donations. One scenario: A cartoonist freely syndicates his comic to anyone who cares to publish it online, and makes money from readers and fans from all around the Web who click on the content-embedded donate box. (Advertising also could still be embedded in the free-syndicated version of the comic.)
5. EmanciPay : This under-development initiative comes from the Berkman Institute for Internet and Society at Harvard University, and it's an open-source attempt at devising a system that puts the content consumer in charge of how much to pay and when to pay, taking that away from the publisher. The idea is to "provide a single and easy way that consumers of 'content' can become customers of it." According to its developers, EmanciPay will "stigmatize non-payment for worthwhile media goods," using social pressure to encourage the consumer to pay something, rather than demanding it (and thus blocking the benefits of the content being open to aggregators and search engines, and being easily and freely available for sharing with friends and social networks). This is not a micropayment scheme, per se, but rather "microaccounting" that tracks a user's activity and makes it easy for the user to decide how much to pay for content by seeing his or her consumption patterns -- and deciding, say, I'll pay 1 cent for each song I listen to on Pandora, which the EmanciPay system will make possible.
As explained on EmanciPay's page: "It will allow those customers to pay for what they want, when they want, and to initiate actual relationships with the news organizations they pay -- on their own terms as well as those of the news organization." That's a bit vague, but the initiative bears watching.
Compete, or co-exist? With this wave of technological voluntary user/reader-payment systems, what is a news Web site publisher or blogger to do? Choose one? Use a couple of them? Use them all, and others that may come along later?
Of the solutions profiled here, I think Payyattention probably can play nicely with most of the others (but I'm not so sure about EmanciPay). A site that works with Kachingle and encourages its users to join the support-all-Web-content network and pay $5 or more per month also could add Payyattention's donate-per-article boxes. Kachinglers who felt that their monthly "content fee" paid via Kachingle is enough could ignore the Payyattention donate boxes on articles. Non-Kachingle members might be more inclined to donate a dime whenever they liked a particular story or other piece of content.
With competing membership models like Kachingle, Contenture and Inamoon, Web publishers might be tempted to use them all, so that any of their respective members visiting the publisher's site could earn money for that site no matter which voluntary network they use to financially support Web content.
While it's possible that one of these early players in this space could come to dominate the voluntary content payment market, I suspect a more likely outcome is that news Web sites and others looking to capture the most money will try to use them all. It may not look much different to the online users than making an online product purchase and having the option of paying by Visa, Mastercard, Discover, American Express, Paypal, et al. That is: "Here are several ways you can financially support this Web site or this writer. Select one."
A little advice I'll close with a bit of advice and a plea, aimed especially at newspaper and other news publishers with Web sites: Keep most of your news content free and don't erect barriers that could hurt your online advertising revenue stream and institutional reach and clout. Allow the voluntary solutions described in this article to work together to create a strong pay-for-content revenue stream that makes no demands and puts no barriers up to the widest possible distribution of your content and brand throughout the Web. (In other words, don't fight Google; learn to play its game.)
Can you charge for some content and/or services and make the fees mandatory? Absolutely -- there is some content that a news organization can produce online, or services it can create, that warrant a mandatory payment. I'm not suggesting that news sites make everything 100% free; but 95-98% free is more reasonable. And for that small percentage of "special" or "premium" content or services, you have the option of setting a direct price, or making the special stuff available for free to members of Contenture and Inamoon but charging everyone else.
As I've written about the potential of the voluntary model before, I've gotten lots of pushback. Generally, the complaint is a knee-jerk, "Voluntary payments will never work." Well, if you act like a National Public Radio outlet and only ask your audience to donate, you're right, that won't work.
The power of voluntary contributions is in the network. By allowing and encouraging online users to donate money to "all" Web sites and blogs that they visit and enjoy, the network effect can amplify the call for donations. By using the power of "social proof" (I see on Facebook that my friend Walter financially supports Web site X, so I'm inclined to do the same; or, Cheryl liked this story she hyped on Twitter enough to donate 10 cents to its author, so I will too), extended outside the walls of a single Web site or blog, the potential for voluntary financial support of online content far surprasses that of even the best-run NPR-outlet pledge drive.
Voluntary financial support by online users/readers may not save the newspaper industry; it probably won't exceed the amount of advertising dollars that a site brings in, unless online advertising collapses (as a few pundits have begun to suggest it will). But this is a revenue stream not to be ignored.
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Readers Want to Pay for News Online -- So Let Them
