Cheezhead Recruiting News and Opinion

I’ve talked a few times on this blog about a future where journalists might become entities unto themselves, no longer reliant on corporate newspapers, magazines, radio, television, etc. Such a scenario could have fatal implications for all kinds of established media outlets.

When I discuss this issue with friends and business associates, the typical response is that I’m a little whacky. No biggie, I know I’m a little out there.

However, it looks like I’m not alone. Checkout this step-by-step guide to how micropayments could change media as we know it. The article focuses on the music industry, but it’s relevant on many levels.

A micropayment system allows users of content to purchase items online for pennies. Considering how much it costs just to make a transaction online, because of fees and overhead, such low payments don’t make sense financially. It would be very difficult in our current climate for iTunes, for example, to sell songs for 15 cents and make any profit.

The gist of the article is explaining how artists of all kinds – musicians, reporters, bloggers, journalists, talking heads, you name it – could create a nice living for themselves as individuals by utilizing a micropayments system instead of relying on Corporate America.

One example in the article sites an online comic strip creator, who has 30,000 readers, could make upwards of $70,000 yearly by simply charging just 25 cents a month.

There’s an audience for everything. And in most cases, there’s probably enough of an audience for every topic under the sun to warrant payments in the 25 cents per-month ballpark to support anyone creating good content. A short-list of authors I’d support include industry pundits like John Sumser, to marketing gurus to sports writers to music experts. In all those cases, I’d pay more than 25 cents.

A micropayments  system could potentially bleed into the online recruitment space as well. No doubt a huge complaint by employers is the amount of unqualified applicants they get from job sites and the Web. Micropayments support a system where job seekers would have to pay a small fee to reply to a job possible. This would help eliminate the shotgun search-and-apply practice so widespread today.

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