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There once was such a system —Google Contributor. It was supposed to be expanded into a full micropayment system once there was a baseline market activity to se

There once was such a system —Google Contributor. It was supposed to be expanded into a full micropayment system once there was a baseline market activity to set the prices by, using the price of ads to bootstrap. It didn’t work, obviously, but mostly because people just don’t want to pay. Not even if a typical cost is single digit dollars per month, or less.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago
I like Blendle for the occasional paywalled news article I really want to read. But, yeah, mostly I just bounce if something’s not free and, I think people need to be honest with themselves about the consequences of removing ads from the internet: it’ll be significantly harder for new sites to both be profitable and attract an audience and they’ll have to choose between giving away unmonetized content to attract people and putting content behind some sort of paywall so that they can cover their operational costs. We’re already starting to see this model with Substack and Medium, and I’m not sure if it’s a better model, or just a different one.
iaml 5y ago
>It didn’t work, obviously, but mostly because people just don’t want to pay. Are you sure about that? I reckon a lot of people didn't know it existed.
bluescrn 5y ago
Nobody has managed micropayments that are actually micro. Even F2P games rarely allow you to spend less than about $1 at a time - it's all about chasing whales who'll spend $99.99 repeatedly... In the case of something like YouTube, they'd want vastly more (and as a monthly subscription) to remove the ads than they'd earn from an average user watching the ads. The alternative might have been a 'watch without ads' button, allowing a truly small transaction (a few cents) to watch a specific video without ads.
- ghaff 5y ago
  For charging just a few cents to work, it would have to be normed across a wide range of media to the degree that a meter just transparently clicked against a payment balance in essentially the same manner as turning on a faucet or a light switch. And that's a really high bar in an online world where people are used to either free or a relative handful of all-you-can-eat subscription services that cost enough that people sign up for them fairly deliberately.
  - Chris2048 5y ago
    > that's a really high bar in an online world For all the BS projects google has spent money on, then just killed off, a micropayment system should be easy. > all-you-can-eat subscription services Then give an alternative AYCE option too. Just implement micropayment caps. e.g. When total monthly micropayments are => $10, cap it at that amount until some other thresh-hold. Allow pre-payments. easy.

fiddlerwoaroof 5y ago

I like Blendle for the occasional paywalled news article I really want to read. But, yeah, mostly I just bounce if something’s not free and, I think people need to be honest with themselves about the consequences of removing ads from the internet: it’ll be significantly harder for new sites to both be profitable and attract an audience and they’ll have to choose between giving away unmonetized content to attract people and putting content behind some sort of paywall so that they can cover their operational costs. We’re already starting to see this model with Substack and Medium, and I’m not sure if it’s a better model, or just a different one.

iaml 5y ago

>It didn’t work, obviously, but mostly because people just don’t want to pay. Are you sure about that? I reckon a lot of people didn't know it existed.

bluescrn 5y ago

Nobody has managed micropayments that are actually micro. Even F2P games rarely allow you to spend less than about $1 at a time - it's all about chasing whales who'll spend $99.99 repeatedly... In the case of something like YouTube, they'd want vastly more (and as a monthly subscription) to remove the ads than they'd earn from an average user watching the ads. The alternative might have been a 'watch without ads' button, allowing a truly small transaction (a few cents) to watch a specific video without ads.

ghaff 5y ago
For charging just a few cents to work, it would have to be normed across a wide range of media to the degree that a meter just transparently clicked against a payment balance in essentially the same manner as turning on a faucet or a light switch. And that's a really high bar in an online world where people are used to either free or a relative handful of all-you-can-eat subscription services that cost enough that people sign up for them fairly deliberately.
- Chris2048 5y ago
  > that's a really high bar in an online world For all the BS projects google has spent money on, then just killed off, a micropayment system should be easy. > all-you-can-eat subscription services Then give an alternative AYCE option too. Just implement micropayment caps. e.g. When total monthly micropayments are => $10, cap it at that amount until some other thresh-hold. Allow pre-payments. easy.