The idea of charging a few pennies or dollars to access content or a service is not new, after all – we have iTunes, Google announcements about charging small amounts for accessing certain content and a great deal of talk by the newspaper and magazine industry about charging a few cents per article or a few dollars for a monthly membership account.
While there is some debate over whether traditional publications can move to this model, there is no doubt that for certain topics, a very powerful model for information marketing is to employ a micropayment model.
Roughly speaking, your markets will fall into two broad categories…
1. Smallish, highly focused niche markets where you offer deep, specialized and even personalized information at a higher price. In such markets you can offer a range of infoproducts including ebooks, membership sites right up to group and personal coaching options. Due to the specialized and current nature of the information combined with the relatively smallish size of the market – say less than 1Million people – you target a higher price point and offer staggered entry points.
2. Larger, mass-markets where you can offer a low-cost, more generalized information option either on a price for each piece of content basis (Ex $1 for access to a video, article or short report) or a monthly mass-market access cost under $5.
Where might these micropayment models work?
- Weight loss niche – offer the latest research, news, tips, techniques and social network around weight loss for $4/month
- Cooking/food – with Millions of potentially interested targets, you could offer a recipe site, sharing site or targeted food site for a low monthly fee using the micropayment model
- Seniors – tackling an issue a week that helps seniors with health, financial, wellness type issues would open up a mass market at a low monthly cost
- Technology – many of us love to see the latest technology gadget reviews and would gladly pay a few bucks a month for access to a site that aggregates and offers some new reviews of top gadgets each month
What about your internet business? Can you target your market with a micropayment option where you can publish and drip content to a large market? You may very well find out that you can make much more money in your market by offering a low-end, micropayment based option than trying to deliver another ebook, or high-paid membership site.
