Study reveals people are willing to pay for online news
By Stewart Mitchell
Posted on 12 Nov 2009 at 11:56
One in five surfers would be prepared to pay for reading online articles using a micropayments service, according to figures from Continental Research.
Micropayments are seen as one way to save the world's ailing newspaper industry as it struggles to come to terms with falling news-stand and advertising sales in the internet age.
When questioned about paying for news content online, 63% of respondents said they would flatly refuse, and just one in 20 would be willing to pay a monthly or annual subscription for any particular site. However, 21% would be prepared to pay a small one-off fee for reading an individual item.
“The amounts may sound small, but it is better to get a lot of people making small one off payments, than virtually no-one paying a higher subscription,” James Myring, head of media at Continental Research. “For a comparison, think of the mobile industry, profiting from lots of small payments for text messages.”
Key to a successful micropayments system, says Myring, will be getting the price right. The survey showed that 35% of respondents would definitely or probably pay 2p per article, but this drops to 22% prepared to pay 5p, and 7% prepared to pay 20p.
The figures are particularly poignant at a time when big media companies, including Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, say they plan to block free access to news sites.
However, as we reported earlier this year, there are still technical and logistical problems involved in setting up a system to accept tiny payments.
"Micropayment systems need critical mass to be any use to merchants, but the whole market is really fragmented because people are scrabbling to launch their own systems," said Mike Beattie, CEO of SMS-based payments company Sepomo. "There's no ubiquitous system."
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The main reason the worlds newspaper industry is ailing is because they print a complete load of rubbish... not news!
It's really not hard to understand.
Oh actually, apparently it is?
By robgt1 on 12 Nov 2009 
How about this alternative?
Instead of micropayments, how about every time I buy a News International publication, Rupert Murdoch is hit with a plank?
INSTANT SUCCESS! Empire saved!
By cheysuli on 12 Nov 2009
Everyone's bitching about how crap newspapers are. If they're so crap why are people concerned about them charging for their content?
Obviously nobody reads crap content so the difference to consumers as a whole and those whingers in particular is neglible.
By Phoomeister on 13 Nov 2009
As the article states, micro-payments have been just around the corner..... for 10 years.
Its going to be hard to get people to subscribe unless they feel they have a guarantee of continuing quality.
A payment-per-article might be better (although you have to pay before you find out whether its going to be worth it), but as with music they will inevitably price it above what most people are willing to pay, eg 5p an article = £1 for 20 articles, but buy the paper and you get hundreds of stories (with the opportunity for serendipitous discoveries).
I think people say they want 'quality' but when it comes to it they will put up with lower-quality 'free' (even if that is a shout-first shout-loudest blogger). And the only way to switch to pay-per-read, will be for all the publishers to get together and switch all at once, and thats not the kind of collusion that could be allowed. I think Murdoch is hoping he's a big enough player to lead the pack, but on the internet there always seems to be another well-funded start-up ready to burn millions of dollars to get eyeballs, that prevents the existing companies making any money.
By davidsoap on 13 Nov 2009
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