Make Money with Micropayments
Saturday, November 7th 2009 @ 12:00 AM (not yet rated)
The reality about building a business online is that although there ARE profitable businesses leveraging their own content, the majority do not profit directly from their own content but rather make money on the back end of it. What I mean is that they make money from affiliate links, advertising, promoting other people's products or perhaps even more ironically, have a site that sells courses about "selling courses online" or sells an ebook about "how to sell ebooks".
There is nothing wrong with these methods and you will find future articles here that will detail how to use each of those methods successfully to make money online. But...
What if those of us in the content creation business could actually sell our own content and make money?
Enter the Micropayment or Minipayment Method
The concept is actually very simple and is used by some of the most successful businesses online today. You continue to build your content and provide value for your visitors or members but you sell your most unique or targeted material for a very small, one time payment--or micropayment.
Here's what you do
Step #1 Provide Something of Value
Most internet marketers would agree that content people will pay for falls into one of the following categories:
- It provides new, valuable information of the desired niche. This may take the form of a report, survey, ebook, video or guide
- It solves a problem in the form of a screencast, how-to guide, tutorial or video lesson.
- It entertains (Music, Video or Books)
- It helps people make money
Step #2 Charge a (very) minimal amount
Somewhere from $1 to $10 bucks...obviously the pricing is dependent on your product but keep it small. VERY small....under $5 is ideal and be sure to over deliver. Don't be afraid to provide some really great stuff that took you days/weeks/months to create for a few bucks. Remember, the internet is about numbers and once you have created your product it will continue to make you money--even if it is just a dollar at a time.
If you REALLY begin to think about this whole micropayment idea you will discover that it really is a major paradigm shift and you will soon find hundreds of unique ways to sell quality content with impulse purchase pricing.
I mentioned earlier that there are companies that use this method and are incredibly successful--Think iTunes for an obvious example. $1 for a desired song? Absolutely. The financial "risk" is non-existant and the product can be instantly purchased.
The double combination of a low price and instant availability is the perfect use of leveraging online business for what it does best--less overhead/lower prices and 24/7 instant access.
More thoughts...
Do you already have a ton of content in your membership site? Take that existing content (or parts of that content) and edit it into one concise ebook or report and save your members or guests from spending all the time looking for it. Those that want to dig through the archives certainly can but there may be others who will gladly pay $3 for an organized collection of articles in a concise pdf format that they can download and print to read offline. "Repurposing" your existing content in a form that your members or visitors can use offline saves you time and provides another resource you can offer your members or visitors.
Consider how you are currently selling and see if you can take that six hour $47 video course and instead sell six one hour videos at $8 each.
The micropayment model is already building momentum online and is surely going to continue to grow.
It reminds me of what my father said when I was young and would complain about the nickels and dime tips I received on my paper route:
"Watch your pennies and the dollars will take care of themselves Son". They did and the micropayments model will do the same for you.
