by SEO & Affiliate Consultant
M. Thomson
M. Thomson
At a recent conference, Rupert Murdoch, chairman and managing director of News Corporation (News Corp) recently announced a 47 percent slide in profits that the director blamed on the company's business model - providing news content for free. Mr Murdoch stated his belief that users would be willing to pay if companies began charging users for news content. This created uproar in the digital world, with many bloggers claiming that this business model would never work and that users would never pay for content.Google then announced an update to Google Checkout - the introduction of micropayments offering an easy way for users to pay for content.
It seems inevitable that paid content will be part of our digital lives within the next year, but how can Google ensure that it maximises exposure for its paid news content over that of rivals such as Journalism Online - which claims to have tentatively signed 500 newspapers for its online distribution service?
Bigmouthmedia believes the answer lies in Google Subscribed Links.
Google Subscribed Links
Subscribed Links are part of Google Coop that allows websites to create custom search results.
Subscribed links are triggered whenever a user searches in Google for a keyword that is associated with a subscribed link. As website creators decide which keywords are associated with a URL, subscribed links appear frequently.
This enhanced promotion would likely influence news publishers to choose Google over Journalism Online, especially if the Subscribed Links were tied in with the micropayments system - if paying for content led to automatic subscription.
Process Cycle
- User sees content in Google
- User wants content
- User pays for content via Google Checkout
- User subscribes to content
- Google promotes subscribed content
Happiness Cycle
- Publisher happy with subscription
- Publisher happy with promoted content and revenue from advertising
- User happy with content
- Google happy with commission from Checkout
- Google happy with gained user
All parties involved - the user, publisher and Google - are happy as they all take a piece of the pie. Subscribed Links could truly be the key marketing arm of paid-for content for Google, especially if Subscribed Links were automatically set upon payment.
Additionally, users who pay for content will likely want to take advantage of it. As Subscribed Links will promote paid-for content over the rest of the web, this will result in a happier user.
If paid-for content does hit us soon, Google will want to benefit from the revenue, and supporting micropayments with Subscribed Links could be their best approach, as Subscribed Links has thus far had a very low pick-up.
I'll leave you with the description of Subscribed Links from Google's website - pay attention to the word "news":
"You can display links to your services for your customers, provide news and status information updated in near-real-time, answer questions, calculate useful quantities, and more."
