Publishers Need Micro-Payments Now
The news publishing industry has been in decline since the start of the 21st century. This has been caused by the growth of social media and the digital revolution that has put print sales and their advertising into serious decline as the Internet’s World Wide Web search engines have taken large portions of publishing market’s income by taking advertising revenues.
This process change is now causing the growth of fake news, propaganda and personal blog opinion. Professional journalist jobs are in decline. Publishers are now in a continuous struggle for new revenue.
And so new micro-payments are now a growing source of revenue creation for news publishers. There are now a few solutions and recently a new micropayment system for publishers has begun in London.
With an office in Covent Garden London, Agate Systems was created by Dominic Young a couple of years ago in May 2017.
Agate’s aim is to solve the publishing industries crucial revenue growth needs as paper and digital advertising is falling and hard copy newspaper and magazine sales are falling and Agate already has over 4000 paid readers.
Previously Dominic had worked for News Corp. which he said was an excellently run organisation allowing new ideas and employees to bloom in a creative environment. Subscription sales in the whole of publishing is mainly falling and so what Agate does is to allow readers to pay for news and analysis articles on an article by article basis. The reader can put some money into their Agate wallet account and gradually spend across the sites that are connected to Agate.
For readers this is a large advantage in a global news environment where being able to choose different publications and news/analysis articles of particular interest gives the reader a broader global choice.
From a publishers point of view it increasingly improves their business model and in a global environment it engages with readers who before often had not realised that publications potential.
Agate is now live on Popbitch, Reaction and The New European and has another eight publications ready to launch in the New Year. Popbitch have signed up over 4,000 readers since it launched a “micro-paywall” on its website earlier this year.
As Dominic Young, explained in our interview, Agate makes payment easy for readers, but it also ensures that publishers retain control over their pricing.
Readers, with an Agate wallet, can use it on any Agate-enabled site, creating a network effect between publishers and their readers.
This process helps to minimises sign-up barriers and maximises the market opportunity as the network grows and helps to, increase a publication’s subscriptions over time, as readers engage with global publishing opportunities.
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