The 2019 GEN Summit saw so much positive awareness about how different monetization models can complement subscriptions. Just like at INMA earlier this year, people are paying attention, listening to the arguments being made, and building their own opinions. In this article for Medium, Cosmin Ene shares his own contribution to the debate when he participated in a panel on the future of publishing and paywalls.
NEW YORK, NY — June 5, 2019 — World Table, the online public engagement platform for the world of journalism, and LaterPay, which offers users immediate, frictionless access to content or services without requiring upfront registration or payment, have announced the expansion of their partnership to help publications build, manage and serve their communities, converting users into subscribed readers. World Table and LaterPay have teamed together to help publishers utilize the World Table platform to collect subscriptions and revenue in new channels, with the shared goal of motivating audiences to pay for high quality content while also elevating the online conversation.
“Good journalism is worth paying for,” said Bryan Hall, CEO of World Table. “By partnering with LaterPay, we are determined to leverage our platform to provide readers with a space to engage further with authors and publishers and to offer a frictionless way for audiences to financially support journalists and publications for their work.”
A public benefit company, World Table is committed to supporting and funding effective, responsible, and sustainable journalism. At the heart of this is the company’s recognition that journalism requires an engaged community, providing a forum for civil discourse and public debate and incentivizing readers to act as content creators, curators, and ultimately customers. World Table supports smaller newspapers who are looking to capture the attention of, and grow, their audiences, by helping develop a community of readers and build a subscriber base; larger publications leverage World Table’s suite of tools to manage their audiences filter engaged readers into subscribed users.
“As digital advertising plateaus, publishers are accelerating the pursuit of direct revenue from audiences,” said Hal Bailey, COO of LaterPay. “At the same time, we know that only a very small portion of an audience will commit to a subscription. That’s where LaterPay and World Table come in – identifying new means to monetize publications and their content.”
LaterPay enables publishers to convert engaged users into subscribers at a higher rate and monetize users unlikely to ever subscribe by offering them immediate access to content that they pay for later. By using LaterPay’s solution, digital publishers and service providers can simultaneously expand existing subscription models, increase paying customer bases and improve user experience.
About World Table
World Table makes online engagement tools for publishers, editors, and journalists specifically in the news industry. World Table has a complete suite of audience engagement tools, including one of the best, easiest-to-use online commenting systems and a highly effective, yet low maintenance moderation system. All our tools are fully integrated with TownNews’ BLOX CMS, and install in a matter of minutes. For more about World Table PBC www.worldtable.co
About LaterPay
LaterPay owns patented technology for enabling micropayments without upfront registration, facilitated by the “use now, pay later” approach. This allows users to consume paid content and services on the internet with one or two clicks — without prior registration or having to pay in advance. It is only when the online tab’s $5 limit is reached that users are prompted to register and pay. LaterPay aims to empower content providers to monetize the vast space that lives between ads and subscriptions. www.laterpay.net
There used to be two ways to read a news article — buy a subscription or buy a “Single Copy” of the newspaper at the newsstand. Today that has changed — online, publishers for the most part rely on only one direct revenue model, the subscription, and the single copy has been lost. At LaterPay, we are proposing to bring the single copy back in the form of a 24-hour pass to a publication’s entire website or app. Think of it as a “Digital Single Copy.”
2019 is set to be the most challenging year yet for journalism, and editors and journalists alike face an enormous task: finding a way to incorporate readers into the publishing equation in order to remain profitable. In this article, LaterPay Founder and CEO, Cosmin Ene, proposes five truths that publishers must recognize this year in order to successfully monetize their digital content and keep their readers, rather than their investors, top of mind.
Today’s news publishers are facing difficult situations, among them selecting the best membership model suited for their consumers. LaterPay spoke with Editor & Publisher about its new initiative inspired by the newsstand paper. Called the digital single copy, it is essentially a 24-hour pass to a publication’s entire website or app.
The holy grail of payments providers working within the digital media space is, and has been, converting users to subscribers. The roadblock: How do you ease consumers that are used to getting their content for free into paying for content?
Rather than looking to the future and trying to predict the shiny, new technology and solution that will solve our current woes, we would be better served looking into and improving upon the solutions already available to us.
For the past decade, methods of generating revenue from readers have veered from metered models to subscriptions, and most recently to memberships. But these are all centered on the notion that a user is willing to pay multiple publishers for ongoing access to content. That’s simply not going to happen.
With subscription numbers in the U.S. and Europe plateauing, publishers are now forced to explore alternative ways to grow revenue. Micropayments open up new revenue inroads and enable publishers to establish value with engaged users, creating a path to onboarding readers and converting them into paying subscribers.
The challenges publishers face in the digital age haven’t gone away. The initial conundrum over how to monetize web-based content has intensified as the programmatic landscape becomes more sophisticated, but also tainted by fraud. In the early days, legacy magazines and newspapers tried to replace dwindling print subscription revenue with paywalls. But paywalls and digital subscriptions, conventional wisdom goes, are an affront to the free flow of information for which everybody loved the Internet to begin with.
Within the digital-first business model that has been taken on by nearly all publications that aren’t, for instance, high-end fashion or architecture magazines, clicks are king. But what keeps consumers from clicking through to content – money, or some other obstacle?
A number of micropayments models, particularly in media, have historically failed as a result of three general, and very addressable, issues: a burdensome purchasing process, processing fees, and a poor user experience. Consumers will use—and frequently prefer—micropayments when implemented correctly. The key is making sure the experience benefits both the buyer and the seller.
See ways to overcome the challenges surrounding micropayments in media...
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