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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 r

by 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'.

by markbao 17y ago

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'.