Available now, PublishPay is a new service that has been developed to cater directly to the needs of the whole publishing sector. As many publishers struggle to come to terms with how to make money online, and even how to get their news mobile at all, PublishPay enables them to quickly and easily create a mobile news site that can be generating revenue in a matter of a few minutes.
PublishPay has an in-built payment structure which uses Payforit, a mobile payments service backed by all the UK’s mobile operators, to add the cost of the content to the reader’s mobile phone bill, or remove it from their available credit.
The FT has recently launched its own mobile web app, yet not every publisher has the resources to develop their own solution in-house. PublishPay can create an instant mobile ‘app’ with an in-built payment mechanism, allowing publishers to make money from mobile immediately.
“The conversation around mobile publishing seems to be dominated by apps, yet that is not the right approach for everyone,” said Chris Newell, CEO of ImpulsePay. “As the FT has shown this week, for many publishers it is the wrong approach as it is expensive, time consuming, and limits their audience.”
App development can be a costly and drawn-out process, and only target a niche segment of the population that have the right mobile phone or operating system. There are reportedly only around seven million UK iPhone users, while it is believed that only 3% of mobile users use an iPad to access the mobile internet, so creating a single app limits a publisher’s audience. PublishPay enables publishers to target all handsets, dramatically increasing a publisher’s mobile audience.