Comments on: Why I dislike news micropayments, and a better idea

By: Kachingle Blog : John Tedesco: “I am officially a Kachingler”

Kachingle Blog : John Tedesco: “I am officially a Kachingler” — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 16:21:37 +0000

[...] to pay for online content they appreciate.” I first learned about Kachingle last year from Steve Outing. I thought Kachingle was a cool idea, waited for it to launch, and then promptly forgot about it. [...]

By: I am officially a Kachingler | John Tedesco

I am officially a Kachingler | John Tedesco — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 04:21:14 +0000

[...] first learned about Kachingle last year from Steve Outing. I thought Kachingle was a cool idea, waited for it to launch, and then promptly forgot about it. [...]

By: How to save your newspaper. Not. | relevant media. now.

How to save your newspaper. Not. | relevant media. now. — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 14:51:35 +0000

[...] aufgeteilt wird. Mehr ins Detail will ich hier nicht gehen; wenn es tiefer interessiert kann es auf Steve’s Blog oder in seiner Editor&Publisher-Kolumne [...]

By: Sash

Sash — Sun, 22 Feb 2009 19:05:05 +0000

Kaching is interesting. Also found http://www.znak-it.com recently. They’re launching in april and we plan to use them. We’re interested in more discussion around micropayments : @sashsavic or @alensa

By: #cfund debate: New business models for media| Novos modelos de negócio para os media « O Lago | The Lake

Wed, 18 Feb 2009 18:17:19 +0000

[...] Why I dislike news micropayments, and a better idea [...]

By: Mirek Kowalski

Mirek Kowalski — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 12:50:56 +0000

Steve, I fully agree that it would be a wise step from Google side to acquire Kachingle, because it will be a killing argument in their discussions with the angry publishers, and in fact it will be indirect form of public ownership takeover of news publishers… if it will work, but at least I believe in it:-)

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:20:55 +0000

Matthew: I agree on the scale problem. That will be tough for a start-up like Kachingle. Personally, I hope Google quickly acquires it and pushes the program out on a massive scale. Google CEO Eric Schmidt has said he’d like to help save newspapers and the news business’ decline, which is in part due to Google having a smart ad model that’s moved billions of dollars away from traditional news companies. A Google-run Kachingle would give Schmidt his wish, as well as allow him to fund the efforts of all sorts of online content, including bloggers. Google needs good content online to be successful; here’s a way that it could promote good content from all sorts of sources (including newspapers) by helping fund them — and of course taking a cut to cover administrative fees and a profit. I wish Kachingle well, and perhaps it can be the next Twitter in terms of hyper-growth. But I’d rather see Google use its power to do good and help the Kachingle model grow fast enough that it would genuinely help lots of online publishers, small and big.

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 04:00:20 +0000

Deb: 1. I foresee the need for a marketing and education campaign, on the part of Kachingle itself as well as individual sites that use it. Just as with music today, probably a minority will opt to pay with a voluntary monthly Kachingle account. So many people, especially teens, get free music, but a small percentage buys it legit on iTunes, et al. As they get older, they’re more likely to pay. Yeah, it kinda sucks, but it’s the reality so deal with it; don’t punish your audience the way the music industry did. If 20% of a website’s audience — even 10% — could be persuaded to pay a monthly fee that they set the fee themselves, and Kachingle reached massive scale, that would be a huge pool of money to support all sorts of online publishers, supplementing their ad revenues.

2. The key is that each Kachingle account holder “supports” a limited number of sites. I had one person tell me he liked the concept and would be willing to pay $5 a month, then he’d support just two of his favorites sites — viewing everything else on the web for free. I suspect we’ll see that kind of behavior rather than a user supporting 100 sites and his $5/month getting split over that many.

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:28:49 +0000

TechTownNC: We all happily pay our Internet access fees and our cable bills. I *think* enough people will consider a monthly content fee (set at what amount they choose) to be reasonable to result in serious money.

I agree that Kachingle needs to get acquired by a Google to scale enough to actually solve some of our revenue-for-content problems. OTOH, if the idea takes off like wildwire in the way of Twitter, then it could start to work even before Google inevitably acquires it.

By: Steve Outing

Steve Outing — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 00:23:33 +0000

Norbert: Re “content access fee” forced on Internet providers. That would be peachy-keen and solve many of our problems. I just think it’s impossible that the ISPs could all agree to implement. Would take what, a government mandate to force them to do it? And it’d be an expensive thing for them to manage distributions to publishers, so they’d fight it unless they could take a big enough slice to cover their costs and some profit.