There has been a lot of discussion about newspapers charging for online content, but not much has been said about bloggers doing the same.
A company called Fraxion Payments has now made it possible for bloggers to charge as little as one cent per article.
“Creators of quality content can now charge for their work,” says Chris Wilkins, co-founder of Fraxion Payments.
“Those who create the content will get the lions’ share of the revenue. This is the way it should be.”
The company says bloggers will be paid up to 85 percent on a monthly basis for purchased articles, “which may well be a huge boost for citizen journalism”.
The payment is actually 60 percent for total royalties of less than US$100 per month.
Readers need to register for both a Fraxion account and the blog they wish to pay for content. I find that a little clumsy and it could deter some casual visitors who otherwise wouldn’t mind parting with 10 cents to read a story. The Fraxion people say they are working on an update where people won’t have to login, but “don’t ask when it will be ready”.
My “Fraxion Payments Account Registration” email went to the spam box in Gmail too, but I guess that can happen with any automated message.
Once registered, readers need to purchase Fraxions, which are about one US cent each.
The system looks easy enough to use from a blogger’s perspective, with payments made through PayPal when US$200 is accrued.
I can’t imagine readers paying for content on a personal blog like this one, but niche sites and citizen journalist sites may succeed in attracting payments.
It’s an innovative concept and one that I suspect will grow in usage.
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Hi there.
The $200 min payment has been dropped to $20. Hey, we just put this thing together, and we want to make sure we don’t get into trouble as we develop this thing.
And we would love it if no registration was required, but that is obviously not possible. You have to register even with Amazon to get a book.
In any case, as computers do a good job of remembering passwords, in time, even this won’t be an issue.
As for people paying for content, they already are. And we released this thing to the world only last Monday (8 March). But of course this is going to take some time for people to get used to the concept, for sure.