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This is a step in the right direction. They have to make it easy enough and cheap enough yet profitable enough. It's like a previous discussion on ebooks: for

by markbao 17y ago

This is a step in the right direction. They have to make it easy enough and cheap enough yet profitable enough. It's like a previous discussion on ebooks: for intellecutal content, hit the spot where people want to pay money for it, but think it's cheap enough to just throw a bit of money at it. Case in point: I don't care if I have to pay 10 cents to view an article. 10 cents is nothing to me. The content and satisfaction of curiosity (given an excerpt, of course) is worth it.

w1ntermute 17y ago
The most difficult problem to solve is the method of payment. Just the fact that one has to enter his/her credit card (or other form of payment) information is going to be an enormous deterrent. I just don't know if there's a good enough mechanism in place for micro-payments to be practical.
- markbao 17y ago
  I agree. I'm dealing with the same problem in one of my startups too, which deals with consumer micropayments as well. I think Tipjoy is taking a step in the right direction; the problem is just payment fulfillment. And without a ubiquitous micropayments provider that has access to a lot of people's credit cards (like PayPal?) it's always going to be an unfortunate obstacle.
  - ivankirigin 17y ago
    Embedded credit card forms are the next best thing to a ubiquitous micropayments service. Charge for $10 for a year instead of $1/mo. With our API, Tipjoy is moving towards this. You can mandate payment just by checking if a pledge has been followed through with a payment. http://tipjoy.com/api http://tipjoy.com/api
  - seertaak 17y ago
    I think the answer already exists, to some extent: it is iTunes. In my opinion, iTunes solves the problem of multiple card detail entry. You enter your details once, and from that point on a single click buys you whatever you want. Anyone who's used iTunes for any period of time knows how addictive it can get. In other words, a closed application in which you login to some centralized repository. On that repository you can efficiently search all the content available. Because you log in that the start, any purchases require only a single click. It is easy to implement package deals in this way also. The browser can be made to use standard HTML so that content creators don't need to anything radically different from standard web solutions (i.e. make the browser have WebKit built in). Can anyone think of what's wrong with this method? There is another, more nefarious advantage. If the dominating content companies want to stick it to Google (which, given Google's behaviour towards them, wouldn't be all that surprising), they can allow their content to be searchable on Windows Live or alternatives, and not on Google. Then, for the first time, Google's service would actually be worse than its competitors'.
rms 17y ago
I don't think they're going to pull this off; to me "rightfully high" means it will be significantly more than $0.10 per article.
- markbao 17y ago
  That's true. The online payments would have to have a huge audience comparable to its paper circulation. If we're talking WSJ at $1.50 newsstand price, it could be $0.10 per article... if advertising was consistent online, which we know isn't the case.

by markbao 17y ago

w1ntermute 17y ago

The most difficult problem to solve is the method of payment. Just the fact that one has to enter his/her credit card (or other form of payment) information is going to be an enormous deterrent. I just don't know if there's a good enough mechanism in place for micro-payments to be practical.

markbao 17y ago
I agree. I'm dealing with the same problem in one of my startups too, which deals with consumer micropayments as well. I think Tipjoy is taking a step in the right direction; the problem is just payment fulfillment. And without a ubiquitous micropayments provider that has access to a lot of people's credit cards (like PayPal?) it's always going to be an unfortunate obstacle.
- ivankirigin 17y ago
  Embedded credit card forms are the next best thing to a ubiquitous micropayments service. Charge for $10 for a year instead of $1/mo. With our API, Tipjoy is moving towards this. You can mandate payment just by checking if a pledge has been followed through with a payment. http://tipjoy.com/api http://tipjoy.com/api
- seertaak 17y ago
  I think the answer already exists, to some extent: it is iTunes. In my opinion, iTunes solves the problem of multiple card detail entry. You enter your details once, and from that point on a single click buys you whatever you want. Anyone who's used iTunes for any period of time knows how addictive it can get. In other words, a closed application in which you login to some centralized repository. On that repository you can efficiently search all the content available. Because you log in that the start, any purchases require only a single click. It is easy to implement package deals in this way also. The browser can be made to use standard HTML so that content creators don't need to anything radically different from standard web solutions (i.e. make the browser have WebKit built in). Can anyone think of what's wrong with this method? There is another, more nefarious advantage. If the dominating content companies want to stick it to Google (which, given Google's behaviour towards them, wouldn't be all that surprising), they can allow their content to be searchable on Windows Live or alternatives, and not on Google. Then, for the first time, Google's service would actually be worse than its competitors'.

rms 17y ago

I don't think they're going to pull this off; to me "rightfully high" means it will be significantly more than $0.10 per article.

markbao 17y ago
That's true. The online payments would have to have a huge audience comparable to its paper circulation. If we're talking WSJ at $1.50 newsstand price, it could be $0.10 per article... if advertising was consistent online, which we know isn't the case.