Can Pay-Per-Post Actually Work?

[Paleus]

Hi Guys,

It's good to be on the Webmastersun Forum with you all. I'm new here, and I came with a question I hope some of the experienced marketers here could possibly help me with.

Is a pay-per-post blogging model actually effective?

I'm looking at implementing a small fee for about every 1 in 5 posts on my site. This post would be a very detailed article and would also include an instructional video. The fee for these posts would likely be $2 - $5 to unlock the full article.

Now you might be thinking, "who is going to pull out their credit card for a $2 article"? And generally I would agree this is silly (or not possible), but my niche is in the bitcoin industry and digital currencies make small payments such as this very feasible. Actually, with the integration I have currently, making a payment with bitcoin is very straight forward and quick.

What I am wondering is if any of the marketers here have experience with the pay-per-post model of monetization. Can something like this work? What are the downsides? Should I instead try some other model?

Any advice is appreciated as I am currently experimenting with ways to monetize my site.

 

[HBAndrei]

Someone will pay those 2 bucks just to copy/paste your locked article and post it for free on their site or on a number of forums.
Then your article would be useless.

 

[Paleus]

Paleus

The same could be said about the ebooks I'm selling, or any other piece of content. It can all be copy and pasted.

However, I tend to think people sharing my work freely like that, even if it skirts my ability to charge them, would make the model more profitable in the long run anyway. Some authors purposely put their books on bittorrent before they launch it to create a buzz and stir word of mouth marketing. This DRM-free model has proven to increase sales in the long run even when the content is supposed to be paid for. I tend to think the same thing would work with a pay-per-post model no?

 

[Nytshade]

It can work, depending on the amount of value you'll be offering among a lot of other factors like how much do they really need the content for instance.

How they arrive on the page (where they're coming from) can also affect conversions. Whether they're coming from an email newsletter, blog, social media, press, search engine etc. that also determines if the model will work or not.

That is why it's always good to build an email list to build trust, add bonuses and encourage them to buy. So your model can work but depending on a lot of factors, especially how you market the paid blog posts/articles.