[pbrown]

Just wanted to throw something out there as food for thought/discussion starter.

In my opinion, the current argument that people demand free content and will not pay seems to me to be a lot like early Internet (even pre-internet BBS) users who said the Internet wasn't the place for business. That obviously has proven wrong. I think the "people will not pay when they can find it free" theory will prove to be wrong too.

[ja2ke]

I think there is plenty of proof that people will pay for things on the internet. However, micropayments, especially "1 cent to read a blog," etc, are worthless. Content is not worth a penny and the hassle of a microtransaction. Your content is either worth at least one or two hundred times as much (aka a buck or two), or it's worth nothing and should be posted for free. (Or you should be otherwise bundling your content up into large enough chunks or highlighted portions that the payment is worth your customer's time to make.)

Price as barrier to entry is less of a concern than people think. The real issue for customers is the presence of a new container of content which must be paid for. It's getting over the barrier of actually paying that's an issue. If you have something of value, and make the barrier of entry to unlock the content via payment extremely low, people will pay for it.*

The "If your content isn't going to be free it had better be DAMN CHEAP!!!" mentality comes from the very loud, very wrong Slashdot-types who said the iPod would fail because it wasn't $89 and iTunes Music Store songs weren't gonna sell unless they were $0.15 each. They seemed to do fairly well. People are used to capitalism. A good price -- when paired with a good, desirable and confidently presented product -- indicates quality.+

If you tell your customer that you think your blog post is worth a penny, or that your newspaper is worth 5 cents, (plus the time it would take to actually pay for the product) why on earth is a customer going to think there is any merit to your content?

* Even a pre-signed in one-click "deduct a $0.05 from my microtransaction purse" is a barrier to entry. It's a small one, but you're still asking people to commit to buying something.

+ Obviously by "a good price" I mean a price which isn't so stupidly high that everyone has decided you're ripping them off, or a price so low that you are presenting your product as below-par, a knockoff, or otherwise worthless.

[silencio]

just asking out of curiosity: wouldn't $1 still qualify as a micropayment as well, i.e. a charge easily consumed by processing fees alone? as much as half of $1 easily goes to fees until you aggregate-charge the buyer (if that is even feasible).. and even amazon fps and paypal fee schedules are not that cheap.

I do remember someone bringing up how Apple does micropayments (a la iTunes Store) and Apple charges once or twice in the beginning and then aggregate-charges the rest anywhere from the same day to a few days later. Most places interested in micropayments don't have that kind of luxury of users who will store credit card numbers and buy things on a regular basis..

[warkaiser]

Yeah, I see what you are saying. But what if it was an automated system? No click purchasing to trusted websites where you knew the rates?

[ja2ke]

Would anyone but the sort of person who reads sites like HN go for that? It seems like you would need a lot of training and a lot of trust (or wait for a new generation of humans to grow up) for that to take any mainstream hold, without SOME initial gateway. I mean, even if there were some sort of central PayPal-type system, you'd have to login or click "enable" at least once on any new site. "Enable paying for stuff. [x]"

A truly gateless ("zero click?") system which would just start charging your card the moment you landed on a page would obviously alleviate that issue, but that would imply a (probably currently impossible) amount of trust in content providers.

All that aside, I'm still not wholly convinced the numbers will work out for microtransactions at that low a cost even if people would go for it. I'm glad people are having the discussions, because obviously people need to continue to crack how to make money off of content that isn't a commercial song, TV show, or piece of software, but I'm wary of this particular proposal.

[srn]

I wouldn't mind enabling paying for sites I used a lot.

Providing people with a record of the charges and an easy dispute mechanism both sides could trust would alleviate some of the trust issues with the content providers. Content providers who got dinged too often could be banned from using the service.