How Micropayments Influence The Publisher Revenue Strategy

With more and more publishers making the big digital shift, the traditional ways of making money are now transforming. From digital advertising to paid podcasts, a lot more channels have emerged to help publishers thrive in the new era of technology.

Subscriptions have also paved the way for higher revenues. But every new model has some hiccups. For subscriptions, it is what we call subscription fatigue. It basically refers to a situation when the readers stop taking more subscriptions because they have already signed up for two or three publications.

This is where micropayments grabbed the attention of publishers. The notion of micropayments is not a new one. But it did not receive much attention until now. They can now swoop in and save the publishers’ revenue goals at the end of the day.

Sounds like a pretty picture, doesn’t it? But wait. How does it all happen? And what exactly are micropayments? Let’s delve deeper into this idea and see how it can be lucrative for your revenue strategy!

What are Micropayments?

Usually, publishers opt for the subscriptions model to generate revenue from content. But that possibility can be lower due to subscription fatigue. Or there may be some other reason that the reader is not ready to buy a yearly or monthly subscription to access the content. In such a situation, publishers can avail of micropayments to solve the issue.

Micropayments are small financial transactions that can be done for a particular service. They occur only one time and allow users to purchase content piece by piece.

In simple words, instead of buying the whole subscription, your readers can just buy one or two articles they wish to read.

This model is becoming successful among many publishers. Outlook Magazine launched an article-wise micro-payment option in February, 2021 and the response was wonderful. It is reported that they witnessed 35% conversions through micropayments and made 20 times more money than they would have made from digital ad revenue.

Reasons Why Micropayments Are Lucrative For Revenue Strategy

Creates A New Revenue Channel

Gone are the days when there were just one or two ways to generate revenue in the publishing world. Now, you can add multiple streams to up your profit charts. Micropayments too can become a viable source given their flexibility.It is also a good way to track readers' habits. You can chart what a user loves reading and which articles they are ready to pay for. Based on the data, you can create targeted marketing approaches to offer more articles or even full subscriptions or fixed packages based on their reading habits.

Great Option For Non-Frequent Readers

Not everyone is a frequent reader. And this is why costly subscriptions are not viable for them. But does this mean they should not get to access content pieces or that publishers should offer free content? Absolutely not.

Publishers can look for a hybrid payment system that is compatible with micropayment and offer multiple choices to their users. The small amounts can compound over time to give significant revenue.

Alternative To Ads

The recent increase in ad blockers in the market is making it difficult to get the benefits of ads on the sites. Micropayments can solve this issue too. They can be a good alternative to ads.

Publishers can use them as a new firewall and offer the option to the users for ad-free browsing. All they need to find out is how much people are ready to pay for such an experience.

The Bottom Line

While micropayments are not the ultimate method to get skyrocketing revenue, they definitely offer a good opportunity to create a content monetization strategy that gives consumers a choice for purchasing the content they want.

If you too are ready to upgrade your revenue strategy, make sure you have the right tools. At Quintype, we offer a powerful monetization tool – Accesstype – that can solve all your troubles instantly.