In the early days of the Internet, much of the content available online was provided free of charge, either by various institutions or universities. Over the years, the internet has undergone a variety of innovations. One of the great things in the development of the internet is the ability of consumers to buy, sell and advertise products and services, a concept often referred to as “e-Commerce”.
As the popularity of the internet grows, it is only natural that content providers start looking for different ways to monetize the content they publish online. Basically, there are three ways for users to earn money on content; one is for advertising. Here, the content is available for free; but it does come with some ads or links to their sponsor sites.
Another way for content providers to monetize is through subscription billing, where consumers have to pay a certain amount to get access to content over a period of time. The downside to the subscription, model is that it offers only one option to the buyer - or they do not pay for the subscription so they do not get the content or pay a hefty fee to get all the content. In many cases, this type of selection has led consumers to switch to sites that offer free content. At the time, the third source of revenue was donations requested by content providers themselves.
However, in 1998 a fourth type of revenue was proposed - a lower payment system. The concept of micropayments would not be completely gone, and it would not be fully lived. What are micropayments, exactly? Micropayment is generally defined as a means of transferring small amounts (usually in cents, nickel or dimes), usually in the purchase of digital content such as music, movies, games and more.
Since charging such a small amount with a standard payment system such as credit cards may not work, a slower payment system is a viable option for those websites who wish to go “less”. The main purpose of micropayments is to identify high volume consumers by providing content at a much lower cost. It is also common for low payment systems to collect a few payments and then charge you with one standard payment.
Most micropayments promoters strongly believe that the low payment system is the solution to the problem of free passenger on those sites that rely solely on advertising. In the case of websites that charge a subscription fee, low paying will be another effective way to increase the number of their customers.
However, no matter what the benefits seem to offer micropayment systems, their popularity among consumers did not last long. This is because of the pressing problems that micropayment antagonists are quick to point out. Most opponents of the micropayment system insist that paying less will create disruption rather than easier for consumers. How? The most popular argument used is "mental transaction costs".
What does the cost of a mental transaction mean? However, this is where the buyer stops and thinks twice that the content is really worth the price, no matter how low the price. This may reduce your customer base, as more and more people may choose free content.
Proponents of micropayments believe that the dollar cost of goods is a major factor in diverting students from purchasing content, and that lowering prices to lower paying rates will allow creators to start charging their work without diverting students.
Another potential setback to using low payment systems is that it requires the consumer to use large credit cards. Remember that internet users are very different in age; therefore, you cannot imagine that all could have credit cards. As teenagers are under legal age, they do not have credit cards. Additionally, even among those who live in more developed lands, not everyone has a credit card, and borrowing someone else's credit card just to read an article online can be a real challenge. Simply put, micropayment systems can distinguish those consumers who do not have credit cards.
So with all this going wrong, why do we need micropayments? With the growing demand for ethereal products (such as information) in the global economy and its rapid delivery at low cost, conventional payment methods proved impossible. Since most of the information available on the Internet (Web pages, Web links, etc.) is less expensive and less expensive, the cost of standard charging can be more expensive than the actual product. Therefore, micropayment is another effective method.
Many content providers have agreed that low pay gives them the opportunity to recover the cost of online publishing, even monetizing, that is, if they are popular enough. Currently, content providers see their online popularity as a bad thing, as their popularity requires them to pay a large amount of bandwidth. Another benefit of micropayment systems that give content providers the opportunity to be completely free from sponsorship and advertising, which gives them more independence. In addition to advertising, the provider can focus on important publications that interest their customers instead of what interests their advertisers.
Micropayment programs show signs of recovery recently, what about the launch of Apple's $0.99 iTunes song, the model finally shows some signs of health. In addition, reports on the market status of paid content show that content purchases below $5 increased by 707% in 2002. True achievement, as it made seven jumps from empty.
Although millions of people find the idea of buying $99 worth of songs on iTunes attractive, Apple executives themselves have admitted that most consumers still prefer to buy a great album.
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