New micropayments system launched for bloggers

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A new micropayments system for bloggers has launched, which allows Wordpress.org users to charge as little as one cent for an article.

Fraxion Payments, unveiled last week , has designed a Wordpress plug-in that allows bloggers to customise the way they charge for article. Not all articles need to be locked, and the amount charged can be varied.

Co-founder Chris Wilkins told Journalism.co.uk he had been inspired by an article by former Time managing editor Walter Isaacson which suggested that online users might pay very small amounts if content was "cheap and easy enough".

A micropayments model Wilkins said, is very different from a blanket 'paywall' or subscription model.

Users are given a fair price for content, he said. Rather than 'paywall', Wilkins prefers to use the term 'unlocking' content.

An article is partly visible, before the reader can choose to buy. The Fraxion system allows users to buy bundles of credit to spend on different sites, with the lowest option at $1.50.

This is how it looks on its own site:

Of course, for Fraxion Payments to work it will need to get lots of people signed up - both as bloggers and users of the system.

"In time, you'd be able to go to any blog that's using the Fraxion payment system and use the account: then it truly becomes one click," Wilkins said.

For now, Wilkins is trying to spread the word and get people interested: he's aware it will take time to build up users, he said.

"There's an education process too. A lot of people have downloaded the plug-in - there are a lot of people playing with it, thinking about it."

But while many micropayments conversations centre around media organisations, Wilkins is focused, for the meantime, on individual producers and writers.

The large pool of laid-off or freelance journalists who are struggling to get commissions could find it helpful to have their charging system for a blog, he said. Or even established columnists could find it more profitable to charge on their own site, than go via a publisher, he suggested.

Beyond that, Wilkins can see the potential for creative writers - they could even eventually develop a facility for unlocking books in instalments, he suggested.

The system was inspired by another of Wikins' projects, an online gaming site, Towergames . While small – the site has around 8,000 subscribers and 1,000 regular users – they realised users were prepared to pay $1 per game, with some who pay up to $100 a year.