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The problems with micropayments are 1. The market for lemons. In fact sites trying to "monetize their content" are the most likely to be lemons, so just asking
by ndriscoll 3mo ago
The problems with micropayments are
1. The market for lemons. In fact sites trying to "monetize their content" are the most likely to be lemons, so just asking is a signal that your "content" is not worth anything.
2. If your information does have value, it competes in a market with other sites full of high quality information that aren't trying to monetize it, meaning your specific information has to be specifically very valuable and not available yet for free elsewhere. If it is valuable as information (i.e. not something like creative writing), it will quickly spread and become freely available.
Lots of "content" just isn't worth anything (or has negative worth: it wastes your time). e.g. consider youtubers begging to get viewers to like/subscribe to increase their reach, and people generally don't despite it costing them nothing. Because it's not even worth a click to them.
- deadbabe 3mo agoYes but imagine a platform instead where watching any YouTube video is paid for by a micro transaction. Transparently.
- ndriscoll 3mo agoIn a sense, that already exists. e.g. spotify or youtube premium. In practice only extremely exceptional individuals are going to see anything from it because creative markets are oversaturated, it's trivial to enter them, and people have finite time, so almost everyone is just not worth anyone's attention, let alone compensation.