3 ms·

Micropayments suffers from a number of issues. If my monthly spend it $1 across 20 articles at 5 cents each then a single customer support query is likely to ea

by aleem 12y ago

Micropayments suffers from a number of issues. If my monthly spend it $1 across 20 articles at 5 cents each then a single customer support query is likely to eat up months worth of margins for my account. Refunds are going to be just as hard. Operational costs are also generally quite high for processing payments across thousands of vendors across the Internet which requires not transaction processing, auditing, logging and so forth. There are also practical issues such as building a common processing platform that can be used the same currency across competitors (Microsoft, NYTimes, Google News, etc), currency exchange rates, and so forth. That said, if there were a pay-per-use model, I would happily use it without thinking twice about spending 5 cents on an article.

jzwinck 12y ago
5 cents per article is not realistic. The rate for a basic New York Times subscription is $3.75 per week. At 5 cents per article, their average user would have to elect to pay for 75 articles per week. I don't have access to the data to know for sure, but let's guess an average user reads 3 articles per week. They'd need to pay $1.25 for each...which is probably high enough to convince them not to read some content, which is counter-productive. So it may be better business to avoid per-article purchasing, if it further reduces readership which is very undesirable.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  why not pay to an operator who bundles various sites together? I could see it operating like CATV, you find a group of related sites whose content you enjoy and you pay a monthly or rechargeable account to view articles on that site without being prompted by each site.
- greenpresident 12y ago
  This may prove popular internationally though. An issue of The New Yorker is more than 10€ per week, it gets you a magazine full of 'Going out in New York' and 'Talk of the town'. I know several people who would gladly pay a fee for access to the longer pieces and reports that the OP's article talks about. For them it would be nicest if they could pay per article.
- aleem 12y ago
  If I am reading correctly you are proposing 5 cents is too low so the price should be higher. But the high price will be too high so per-article pricing is bad. Consumption models change and pricing models change with it (singles vs albums, NetFlix vs BlockBuster, etc). The idea behind micropayments was that people could have the al-a-carte option and publications like NYTimes could cast a really wide net, collecting cents from millions of readers. My ISP currently adds metered billing if I go above my plan's bandwidth quota but puts a ceiling until I reach the next plan's limit (which is unmetered bandwidth). This sort of al-a-carte with a ceiling model works quite well.
- hackuser 12y ago
  > 5 cents per article is not realistic. Then 20 cents? I didn't mean to recommend a rate. > I don't have access to the data to know for sure, but let's guess an average user reads 3 articles per week. They may read 3 articles in full each week, but someone reading the news skims many more than 3/week, IMHO. I bet I would pay for 50 easily. I suppose they would need to show me the 1-2 paragraphs before I agreed to pay.

by aleem 12y ago

jzwinck 12y ago

5 cents per article is not realistic. The rate for a basic New York Times subscription is $3.75 per week. At 5 cents per article, their average user would have to elect to pay for 75 articles per week. I don't have access to the data to know for sure, but let's guess an average user reads 3 articles per week. They'd need to pay $1.25 for each...which is probably high enough to convince them not to read some content, which is counter-productive. So it may be better business to avoid per-article purchasing, if it further reduces readership which is very undesirable.

Shivetya 12y ago
why not pay to an operator who bundles various sites together? I could see it operating like CATV, you find a group of related sites whose content you enjoy and you pay a monthly or rechargeable account to view articles on that site without being prompted by each site.
greenpresident 12y ago
This may prove popular internationally though. An issue of The New Yorker is more than 10€ per week, it gets you a magazine full of 'Going out in New York' and 'Talk of the town'. I know several people who would gladly pay a fee for access to the longer pieces and reports that the OP's article talks about. For them it would be nicest if they could pay per article.
aleem 12y ago
If I am reading correctly you are proposing 5 cents is too low so the price should be higher. But the high price will be too high so per-article pricing is bad. Consumption models change and pricing models change with it (singles vs albums, NetFlix vs BlockBuster, etc). The idea behind micropayments was that people could have the al-a-carte option and publications like NYTimes could cast a really wide net, collecting cents from millions of readers. My ISP currently adds metered billing if I go above my plan's bandwidth quota but puts a ceiling until I reach the next plan's limit (which is unmetered bandwidth). This sort of al-a-carte with a ceiling model works quite well.
hackuser 12y ago
> 5 cents per article is not realistic. Then 20 cents? I didn't mean to recommend a rate. > I don't have access to the data to know for sure, but let's guess an average user reads 3 articles per week. They may read 3 articles in full each week, but someone reading the news skims many more than 3/week, IMHO. I bet I would pay for 50 easily. I suppose they would need to show me the 1-2 paragraphs before I agreed to pay.