PayPal continues to innovate and lead the way in online payments. After optimizing checkout pages to increase usability and considerably reduce shopping cart abandonment in September, PayPal announced plans to develop a system for micropayments. Virtual currency continues to gain steam as the sale of digital goods across social networks like Facebook are proving to be wildly successful.
[Header Image: Famzoo, From Cash To Digital, August 10, 2010 via Flickr, Creative Commons Attribution]
Today, PayPal has announced the micropayments solution is now live and available to merchants, game developers and any creative looking to sell digital content online. The fee structure is reasonably low at 5% + $0.05 per transaction under $12.
For information on how to get started accepting micropayments, visit PayPal for digital goods.
The PayPal for digital goods solution opens a lightbox layer (shown below) on-site. This style of checkout was previously only available to merchant services subscribers. Now it will be easy for anyone to set up a two-click checkout for digital products and services.
Effective, fast and seamless micropayments will bring about new global trends in digital commerce. Here are some ideas on how to monetize websites with PayPal micropayments for digital goods and services.
Sell Content
1. Whitepapers - This traditional paid-for digital good is often given away in exchange for email subscription. Now publishers may seek to charge small fees in addition to subscriptions or as an alternative as sign-up rates decline.
2. Code Snippets – These little bits of text can give huge changes and improvements for web developers. Code snippets often give valuable hacks, tips, tricks and optimizations for popular software.
3. Software – I think software developers will be some of the first to adopt a micropayment solutions.
4. eBooks – Another no-brainer; eBooks are a great candidate for this solution and sales should increase much as micropayment options are made widely available.
5. Premium Blog Posts – These would be similar in concept to white-papers, but possibly on a more regular basis for certain niches. They would be included within the RSS feed for more exposure, but restricted to customers only.
Sell Services
6. Social Interactions – You could charge for any number of social network actions. Sell access to your Twitter stream. Offer to share interesting updates or articles for a small fee.
7. Live Chat Support - Recall that pay-phone operator asking you to insert $.25 to continue your call? Yea, that concept could easily be converted to online support now.
8. Text Links – For sites that are into blogrolls and allowing their readers to promote themselves, micropayments could be implemented for this service.
9. Newsletter Subscription – While traditionally free, word of paid-for premium email newsletters is slowly being spread. It’s really not so far-fetched, as a good newsletter can often provide as much value as a newspaper or magazine.
10. Membership Site - Virtually anything you can think of to put online can be placed behind a membership site. What do you have to share and teach? Charge a small fee for instant access.
Digital Goods
11. Community / Game Credits – Blogs, forums, applications are now including communities and game-like rewards systems to entice and engage website visitors and members. If the features take off, you could easily begin selling digital goods and features within the community.
12. Photos and Graphics – Another valuable resource often shared freely on the web that is just waiting to be monetized with micropayments.
13. Podcasts / Video Tutorials – These types of media are known to be of premium value across the web. Even with billions of YouTube videos to contend with, high quality productions with unique content are an easy sale.
14. Music – Artists, producers, DJ’s and other audiophiles will now be able to open up shop and sell their sounds direct to fans. Micropayments may just bring the band website back in style.
15. File Downloads – Whatever your file types are, exclusive downloads are an alluring product and will become more so as they become simple to buy and instantly download.
Micropayments should prove to be a great addition to an internet entrepreneurs’ arsenal. How do you plan to use PayPal micropayments? Please share your ideas in the comments below.
If you found this article interesting, be sure to follow up with another recent DotSauce Magazine feature on 20 ways to make money blogging in 2011.