3 ms·

Tips are cool, but a browser-based micro-payments setup will create a more consistent alternative revenue stream.

TylerE 7y ago
People have been beating the micro-payments horse since at least the late '90s. I don't get it, at all. No one likes turning every action into a financial decision. History has shown that buffet-style pricing (Netflix, Spotify, et al) is much more appetizing - because you only have to make the decision ONCE. There is no financial pain for consuming content.
- vimslayer 7y ago
  Sure, as long as the amount of those buffets stays within reasonable limits. If I stumble to a site from Google, there's no way I'm just going to register to their monthly subsciption plan, no matter how useful their content was. But if I was happy with the content, I could maybe make a one-time donation or payment. I'm afraid that embracing periodic "buffet-style" pricing also embraces big centralized platforms, like Medium, that can provide me enough content to consume for the whole billing period and then they can distribute the profits among content creators. Maybe that could work, but I'm sure HNers have a thing or two to say about the idea of making Medium the buffet where everyone's going to eat.
  - fwip 7y ago
    Micro-payments in this context doesn't refer to voluntary tips, but rather to automatically billing you, say, 1 cent per article you read.
- 0815test 7y ago
  > History has shown that buffet-style pricing (Netflix, Spotify, et al) is much more appetizing For all we know, Netflix and Spotify might be special cases. Cable TV uses the same buffet-style pricing and plenty of people object to that, because it means funding content that they have zero interest in. I'd say the better solution is crowdfunding a la Patreon/Kickstarter, combined with free-and-open content release as an incentive for users to pitch in. This model can be problematic for some forms of media where full costs are hard to assess, especially in advance (feature video), but it would work wonders for "plain" text and other low-commitment stuff.
- ska 7y ago
  People have been talking about it since the (mid) 90's, sure. But nobody has ever implemented it, at least not at any sort of scale. So we can't really say that buffet style has proven "better" - it's just been available. The problem isn't making things into a financial decision, it's making them into a non-trivial financial decision. If you want $10/mo for me to access your particular walled garden, I'm going to have to think about it. And if I'm already paying for a couple other walled gardens, the answer is probably "no". But micropayments are supposed to go the other way. If you have an article that looks interesting from the headline and it costs me a nickle to press "read", I'll probably do that without thinking about it at all. The problem isn't with the idea, the problem is that nobody knows (or wants to know?) how to get the transaction costs down low enough so that the payments are actually "micro". Regulatory bodies don't help here either, as it's not a scenario they've planned around or actually care about.
- danShumway 7y ago
  Eh. Netflix is a good example of buffet-style offerings, but you have to remember that Netflix was born out of cable, which is a much better example of buffet-style, and was largely despised because it was buffet-style. People hated paying for dozens of channels when they only wanted sports. I would add a caveat to this that people like paying a low price for a lot of content. If the price of a buffet is too high, then people will start to ask why they can't just pay for the small amount of food or content that they want to consume.
- crispinb 7y ago
  > History has shown that buffet-style pricing (Netflix, Spotify, et al) is much more appetizing Maybe, but I don't think anyone could make the claim that a micropayments hypothesis has been tested (market or tech) with anything like the robustness or to anywhere near the scope with which those services have been. There's not yet a solid basis from which to compare. In any case, appetising or not, the subscription model is deeply antagonistic to the fundamental nature of the web. It's a model borrowed from prior tech. It works, but it retards the web's innate potential. > because you only have to make the decision ONCE That's the problem. The web is a web. Each link is a decision point. Portals are portals. Leaping through the locked gate is a single decision. They are different things. Portals can be built on the web, but much would be lost if the whole web were to only be portals. Micropayments may or may not be a solution to funding the web in its best potential form. We don't know - but the success of portals has little to say about it either way. They were just a known quantity from a previous world.

People have been beating the micro-payments horse since at least the late '90s. I don't get it, at all. No one likes turning every action into a financial decision. History has shown that buffet-style pricing (Netflix, Spotify, et al) is much more appetizing - because you only have to make the decision ONCE. There is no financial pain for consuming content.

vimslayer 7y ago
Sure, as long as the amount of those buffets stays within reasonable limits. If I stumble to a site from Google, there's no way I'm just going to register to their monthly subsciption plan, no matter how useful their content was. But if I was happy with the content, I could maybe make a one-time donation or payment. I'm afraid that embracing periodic "buffet-style" pricing also embraces big centralized platforms, like Medium, that can provide me enough content to consume for the whole billing period and then they can distribute the profits among content creators. Maybe that could work, but I'm sure HNers have a thing or two to say about the idea of making Medium the buffet where everyone's going to eat.
- fwip 7y ago
  Micro-payments in this context doesn't refer to voluntary tips, but rather to automatically billing you, say, 1 cent per article you read.
0815test 7y ago
> History has shown that buffet-style pricing (Netflix, Spotify, et al) is much more appetizing For all we know, Netflix and Spotify might be special cases. Cable TV uses the same buffet-style pricing and plenty of people object to that, because it means funding content that they have zero interest in. I'd say the better solution is crowdfunding a la Patreon/Kickstarter, combined with free-and-open content release as an incentive for users to pitch in. This model can be problematic for some forms of media where full costs are hard to assess, especially in advance (feature video), but it would work wonders for "plain" text and other low-commitment stuff.
ska 7y ago
People have been talking about it since the (mid) 90's, sure. But nobody has ever implemented it, at least not at any sort of scale. So we can't really say that buffet style has proven "better" - it's just been available. The problem isn't making things into a financial decision, it's making them into a non-trivial financial decision. If you want $10/mo for me to access your particular walled garden, I'm going to have to think about it. And if I'm already paying for a couple other walled gardens, the answer is probably "no". But micropayments are supposed to go the other way. If you have an article that looks interesting from the headline and it costs me a nickle to press "read", I'll probably do that without thinking about it at all. The problem isn't with the idea, the problem is that nobody knows (or wants to know?) how to get the transaction costs down low enough so that the payments are actually "micro". Regulatory bodies don't help here either, as it's not a scenario they've planned around or actually care about.
danShumway 7y ago
Eh. Netflix is a good example of buffet-style offerings, but you have to remember that Netflix was born out of cable, which is a much better example of buffet-style, and was largely despised because it was buffet-style. People hated paying for dozens of channels when they only wanted sports. I would add a caveat to this that people like paying a low price for a lot of content. If the price of a buffet is too high, then people will start to ask why they can't just pay for the small amount of food or content that they want to consume.
crispinb 7y ago
> History has shown that buffet-style pricing (Netflix, Spotify, et al) is much more appetizing Maybe, but I don't think anyone could make the claim that a micropayments hypothesis has been tested (market or tech) with anything like the robustness or to anywhere near the scope with which those services have been. There's not yet a solid basis from which to compare. In any case, appetising or not, the subscription model is deeply antagonistic to the fundamental nature of the web. It's a model borrowed from prior tech. It works, but it retards the web's innate potential. > because you only have to make the decision ONCE That's the problem. The web is a web. Each link is a decision point. Portals are portals. Leaping through the locked gate is a single decision. They are different things. Portals can be built on the web, but much would be lost if the whole web were to only be portals. Micropayments may or may not be a solution to funding the web in its best potential form. We don't know - but the success of portals has little to say about it either way. They were just a known quantity from a previous world.