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WebWord Weblog Posting Posting Date: January 22, 2003 Micropayments part II -- "There's no way to get around the basic problem with micropayments, which is that they ask somebody to perform the mental feat of deciding the value of something they haven't seen yet. The only way to reduce that effort to zero is to reduce the price to zero. When things are free (or at least pay once and use as much as you like, like my subway pass), people don't have to make that decision."
Reader Comments...
If you run a non-profit website you should be able to get some tax relief. I don't like PayPay because they are middle-men who want their cut. Why can't I automatically donate my amazon associate money to some 'good causes'. I would like to be able to funnel some of my pitiful earnings to my local prison so they could buy some books. Where are the e-beggars? Surely they must have some good ideas. As my Uncle says "You'll get your reward in Heaven my son". (Bugger that, I'm an atheist!) Why not just abolish money, socialise everything and then it won't matter. How about a big tax on warmongering to pay for this content? You should be allowed to contribute content during work time so that you can be paid for it by your employer. (Please note: As you can see from the time on this comment, I am at home and NOT at work. So my employer is NOT subsidising this content). Posted by: Mac on January 23, 2003 02:43 AM
"deciding the value of something they haven't seen yet." damn right. That's why I only buy books I've already read at the library, and go see movies at the cinema I've already seen on TV. (the real issue is: if you interpose a nuisance infrastructure demanding attention, then of course it will piss people off) Posted by: Eric Scheid on January 23, 2003 08:17 AM
I have long felt that the economics of the Internet are overly weighted against the content provider. Although search engines get ad revenue because users have faith that the search engines provide relevant results, once you take away web site content, the search engine's value goes away. It would be my druthers that in most instances content providers were provided a usage based royalty, charged through ISPs, and this royalty would apply to all sites except marketing sites like Amazon (where there should be a relationship between traffic and sales). (Some sites, such as Consumer Reports might still choose to charge an additional fee for access.) The additional decision would then be required at sites that want to charge an extra, unless a user is scrupulously minding their behavior. Although I am not king yet, I hope to one day understand why people would click on a link that is not worth a penny to them. Their time is more valuable. (And if that's a deterrent, well, maybe they will spend their time better? And I won't have people coming to my Samuel Johnson site when they are looking for sound bites of the actor Samuel Jackson?) Posted by: Frank on January 23, 2003 08:42 AM
I thought the point of micropayments was that they were *micro* - so cheap that you don't even have to think about what you're being charged. It's not fifty cents for a page, it's perhaps 0.05 cents. Large profit-making publishers could do very well out of such a low payment while amateurs (and I don't mean that in a derogratory sense) would likely continue creating content for free for the same reasons they do now. For expensive, niche content I agree it's unlikely to work though.
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