I don't think micropayments are the future. Flattr has been around since 2010 and I don't think even a single person has made a living wage from it.
The main problem when charging for content is justifying to the user why the price is "fair" before they've actually seen the content. If you can get around that problem, e.g. by using teasers or word of mouth to instill a need, then you can get away with charging much more than a few cents. And if you can't, very few people will be wililng to pay even one cent, because of the huge perceptual gap between zero and one cent.
This model works best for huge chunks of content like books, movies or video games, where you can create compelling teasers that don't give away the whole experience. It's much harder for stuff like music or NYT articles, where the consumable chunks of content are small and teasers don't make much sense. I don't know any good answer for those.
Well, I'm not a representative sample of the general public, but for me NYT's paywall is mostly about the hassle, not the money. I totally won't mind losing 10¢ on an article that was not worth reading, as long as getting to the content was just one paid click, without a monthly subscription or entering details.
What I'd like is a PayPal one-click payment sort of system for that, with limitation of e.g. 50¢ per transaction without authentication (with limits per hour and per domain, etc, preventing money-bleeding exploits).
A huge selling point for me would be an ability to come to a previously unvisited site supporting this system and pay with one click.
The thing is that I don't browse media sites from their home pages, I mostly follow links found in social media. This gives the links some level of trust, because I can assess the poster's credibility before clicking the link.
The main problem when charging for content is justifying to the user why the price is "fair" before they've actually seen the content. If you can get around that problem, e.g. by using teasers or word of mouth to instill a need, then you can get away with charging much more than a few cents. And if you can't, very few people will be wililng to pay even one cent, because of the huge perceptual gap between zero and one cent.
This model works best for huge chunks of content like books, movies or video games, where you can create compelling teasers that don't give away the whole experience. It's much harder for stuff like music or NYT articles, where the consumable chunks of content are small and teasers don't make much sense. I don't know any good answer for those.