3 ms·

Except for the part where people don't pay for stuff. Yes, transactional issues are a thing, 25 cents doesn't work well with VISA etc. but never underestimate

Except for the part where people don't pay for stuff. Yes, transactional issues are a thing, 25 cents doesn't work well with VISA etc. but never underestimate people's willingness to 'not want to pay'. That was always the 'big issue' and that has not changed.

kelnos 6y ago
Right, the technology for doing micropayments is easy; you just create a "wallet" that people periodically top up with some minimum charge like $10 or $20, and then have websites hook into an API to debit from it. (Venmo, Square Cash, etc. are nearly already set up to do this, and I bet Apple and Google would easily get into that game as well.) But people just don't want to pay. Viewership would drop like a rock if a ad-supported publication were to instead charge even 1 cent per article. You also have a first-mover disadvantage. No one wants to be the first blog or small newspaper that starts charging in this way, because people will just go elsewhere. To be effective, everyone would have to agree to magically enable this simultaneously.
- johbjo 6y ago
  Just have a part of the article+ads visible on a news site, then show the rest without ads after a click on 'see the rest for $0.01'.
  - PoignardAzur 6y ago
    You have invented the "paywall". The major problem with that is you end up with nothing but clickbait articles where the first part is pointless filler designed to hook you in so you buy the paid version.
- michaelt 6y ago
  > the technology for doing micropayments is easy Is it? Seems to me there are a bunch of questions left unsolved. For a start, will Visa and Mastercard go along with you using them to make your lower-cost-per-transaction competitor? Won't Apple and Google want to shake you down for their usual 30% ? If a site gets all its revenue from a micropayment 'partner' won't the partner have massive leverage to alter the deal later and screw the site over? How do you protect against perverse incentives - like a micropayment of $0.0001 per page encouraging sites to split articles into 20-page slideshows? Should the payments be automatic or manual? If manual, won't sites get loaded with garish reminders to pay, like youtubers asking for likes and subscribes? Who will set the rate of payment, and will it vary by media? Should viewing two of Reddit's user-uploaded cat photos cost more than reading one piece of quality investigative journalism? What about super-premium things like pay-per-view sports and computer games? What sort of records will be kept - will it maintain an itemised list of all the pages I've visited and when, so billing disputes can be resolved? How will it work for children - can they be given a daily allowance? Will it have loads of parental controls, if I'm happy to pay for some types of content and not others? Are users going to end up quadruple-paying, where they make a micropayment, watch a youtube ad, watch an ad read by the video creator, and it's a shill video anyway? If you have value-for-money standards, how do they get enforced? Will people be able to undo their payments if someone hacked their account? What if their kid was using their computer? What if they just thought the article was clickbait and not worth paying for? Can a user view content for free by viewing it then cancelling the charge?

kelnos 6y ago

Right, the technology for doing micropayments is easy; you just create a "wallet" that people periodically top up with some minimum charge like $10 or $20, and then have websites hook into an API to debit from it. (Venmo, Square Cash, etc. are nearly already set up to do this, and I bet Apple and Google would easily get into that game as well.) But people just don't want to pay. Viewership would drop like a rock if a ad-supported publication were to instead charge even 1 cent per article. You also have a first-mover disadvantage. No one wants to be the first blog or small newspaper that starts charging in this way, because people will just go elsewhere. To be effective, everyone would have to agree to magically enable this simultaneously.

johbjo 6y ago
Just have a part of the article+ads visible on a news site, then show the rest without ads after a click on 'see the rest for $0.01'.
- PoignardAzur 6y ago
  You have invented the "paywall". The major problem with that is you end up with nothing but clickbait articles where the first part is pointless filler designed to hook you in so you buy the paid version.
michaelt 6y ago
> the technology for doing micropayments is easy Is it? Seems to me there are a bunch of questions left unsolved. For a start, will Visa and Mastercard go along with you using them to make your lower-cost-per-transaction competitor? Won't Apple and Google want to shake you down for their usual 30% ? If a site gets all its revenue from a micropayment 'partner' won't the partner have massive leverage to alter the deal later and screw the site over? How do you protect against perverse incentives - like a micropayment of $0.0001 per page encouraging sites to split articles into 20-page slideshows? Should the payments be automatic or manual? If manual, won't sites get loaded with garish reminders to pay, like youtubers asking for likes and subscribes? Who will set the rate of payment, and will it vary by media? Should viewing two of Reddit's user-uploaded cat photos cost more than reading one piece of quality investigative journalism? What about super-premium things like pay-per-view sports and computer games? What sort of records will be kept - will it maintain an itemised list of all the pages I've visited and when, so billing disputes can be resolved? How will it work for children - can they be given a daily allowance? Will it have loads of parental controls, if I'm happy to pay for some types of content and not others? Are users going to end up quadruple-paying, where they make a micropayment, watch a youtube ad, watch an ad read by the video creator, and it's a shill video anyway? If you have value-for-money standards, how do they get enforced? Will people be able to undo their payments if someone hacked their account? What if their kid was using their computer? What if they just thought the article was clickbait and not worth paying for? Can a user view content for free by viewing it then cancelling the charge?