Published on Sat., Dec. 14, 2013

By THEO KARANTSALIS

Bitcoin-enabled paywall for Typepad

Typepad users can monetize their blog posts and accept Bitcoin micropayments using a special platform from San Francisco-based Bitmonet.

“This is the first time BitMonet Open Source project has been used to monetize content on Typepad,” said Ankur Nandwani, Bitmonet’s chief engineering advisor. “This model allows publishers to offer a much better reading experience which is not inundated with ads.”

Until recently, traditional payment systems have not been cost effective for bloggers – or publishers-- because of high transaction fees.

“If a blogger was trying to monetize an article for 15 cents, he or she would end up paying more in transaction fees than the transaction itself,” said Nandwani.

By accepting Bitcoins, he said, bloggers can now monetize without paying any transaction fees and “thus opening up a totally new monetization model” that will attract the attention of larger publishers.

Aside from bloggers, Typepad is used by large media outlets including The Miami Herald.

Nandwani thinks that publishers can make much more money versus traditional advertising with his company’s pay-per-view model.

A publisher that charges one cent per article earns $10 for 1,000 page views, higher than what a it makes through advertising alone, according to Nandwani, who feels it is much easier to accept Bitcoin than other payment systems.

One key advantage to using Bitcoin-enabled transactions, he adds, is that the reader is not required to enter any billing information. For even larger reach, it also allows readers to pay from countries where they may have limited access to credit cards.

Nandwani said that BitMonet has partnered with BitPay to build a “micro-transactions” platform for content creators and publishers. The paywall uses BitPay to process Bitcoin transactions.

Next, the company plans to “revolutionize the Bitcoin payment experience” by expanding its platform to other “verticals” like games and virtual content and mobile devices, according to Nandwani.

“Our main focus is to increase the adoption of Bitcoins, hence all our code is open source, said Nadwani. “BitMonet is free, and it will always remain free.”

Box:

How to install a Bitcoin-enabled paywall on Typepad:

Step one: Sign up for a BitPay API key here.

Step two: Fill out this Bitmonet form.

Step three: Typepad > Dashboard > Posts > Open the post you want to monetize > Copy and paste the form-generated script from step two at the bottom of the HTML code.

Upon reopening the post, your Bitcoin-enabled paywall should look like this: