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"Free" is also a very psychologically special price. Micropayments would make it easier to get over the energy barrier to paying for something, but it's still t
by aesthesia 7y ago
"Free" is also a very psychologically special price. Micropayments would make it easier to get over the energy barrier to paying for something, but it's still there. Laboratory experiments (and real-world experience) show that people value the difference between a price of 1 cent and 0 cents much more than the difference between 1 cent and 2 cents.
- cameronbrown 7y agoWhich is why spreading £10 over thousands of websites is much easier to sell than £0.01 per article. With the later model people become paralised with choice, and the former model has been successful as the backbone for SMS/data infrastructure almost everywhere.
- sgc 7y agoIt would be nice if there were a reciprocal subscription model. All subscribers to the NYT can also view articles of the LA Times or some other site, but reciprocal logins are tracked and funds are divided accordingly. That way, with some limits, each site could set their price, offer the bonus of visiting other sites, and there would not be the huge barrier to entry of requiring a massive player to aggregate things and wield power over publishers they don't want to accept. It's basically the model of reciprocal agreements used by the postal services around the world.
- rswail 7y agoIt's also the model of internet peering, but it requires an even exchange otherwise the imbalances lead to failure. As an example, the current dispute where the US is leaving the Universal Postal Union (a month from today) because the exchange is unbalanced due to e-commerce from/to China.