You can think of payload as a line drawn through the middle of anything that carries something else. On one side sits the carrier: the truck, the rocket, the wrapper around a message, the code that copies itself. None of that is the point. On the other side sits the reason the trip happened at all — the crates, the satellite, the data, the part that acts. Payload always names that second side. Whenever you meet the word, the useful question is the same one: what was this thing built to deliver?
From the word’s history
From pay plus load, from the early twentieth century: originally the part of a cargo that earns the money.
由 pay 加上 load 組成，出現在二十世紀初，本來指一批貨裡真正會賺錢的那一部分。
Wiktionary entry for payload (evidence packet: From pay + load. From the early 20th century), together with its sense 'that part of a cargo that produces revenue'.
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