Previous : What Is This MicroPayment Thing?
If you think this is a self-interest thing please realize that yafla is not nor will ever be a publisher (though that's not to say that I can't see business uses for such a billing system). I don't consider the tripe that I write to be payment worthy and I'm not using myself as an example (and as this is a consulting & software firm that is very far off the ball). This is something I see as necessary to allow a lot of entrepreneurs to follow their passions and actually earn a living at it rather than ebbing off because they have real world needs that aren't met by their "hobby".
Feb. 25th, 2001
After writing this mini-rant I actually decided to do some research and discovered several other articles that had interest. On the other end of the argument there is http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2000/12/19/micropayments.html, which argues against the idea of users willingness to pay for niblets of information. Note that in my case my real "definition" of micropayment is a payment system with a trusted authority, complete user control, and extremely small transaction fees (in other words I would consider buying a subscription to an online magazine for a month through such a system a "micropayment", even though you're not paying $0.02 per article or GIF you look at. My definition of micropayment means that sites could have content packs, or subscriptions). The reason such a system doesn't exist is because the same bank like solutions are thrown at each issue: We'll hire 40 business managers, 400 sales people, 2000 technical support personelle,etc. Gee it's going to cost $2.00 per transaction! Again this isn't rocket science we're talking about here. I also greatly disagree with that article's contention that since such a system has been shown to fail in the past, therefore it isn't possible. That's akin to watching someone trying to take off in early airplane attempts, and on their failure claiming that that was proof that mankind can't fly.
In the early days of the net there was venture capital flooding the net, and these venture capital supported firms were tossing money to and fro advertising willy nilly with no real regard to the return on the ads, the market they were hitting, etc. During the heyday there was incredible amounts of free, and often quite good, content, because it was supported by this foolish money. In such an environment where the competitors are basically subsidizing the content (albeit bleeding money like crazy, but such was the environment just a few months ago), such a micropayment system would never fly because users will always think "Well I can just go to ANOTHER site and get my information". That is quickly fading away though. Good quality, often updated, fast, reliable content is becoming very rare.
Feb. 26th, 2001
One thing that I didn't mention in the preceeding article regarding why it is better if online publications, etc., are user supported rather than advertiser supported is credibility. For example when you read an article rating hard drives and you see aside it a banner ad for an IBM Deskstar hard drive (probably the biggest example is PC Magazine : Often they do big showdown reviews between a genre of products, such as monitors, and throughout the section is a plethora of monitor ads. It is obvious, or at least it seems to be, that the ad sales explicitly told the monitor manufacturers that they were doing a rundown in advance, and gave them an opportunity to advertise)...if it doesn't concern you then you are perhaps a bit too naive. While writing this I have to confess that when talking about stock analysts I had a moment of hestitation where I thought "But what if yafla solicits work from a firm that has analysts?", and these are just random rants in an area where exceedingly few people will ever read them! (Oh and to such firms : I did say in the article that there are good analysts out there...you're one of them!) Such is the nature of not biting the hand that feeds you, and while it is a very vague and unsubstantiated risk for yafla, it is a HUGE risk for advertiser driven review sites, for instance, to slam a product that is a huge ripoff piece of junk if it comes from the company that is basically paying their bills. More than likely the review will come off lukewarm and a lot of misdirected readers will buy it having been misdirected.
Feb. 26th, 2001 Part 2
This should scare you (thanks Mr. M. Battram for the link)
Feb. 26th, 2001 Part 3
Wow the incredible influence of Slashdot! The host of this website (Pennyhost) actually held up perfectly but a couple of quirks (and the fact that NT locks files when they are "cached") stopped me from being able to fix a short term problem: I still can't switch over index2.htm to index.htm so undoubtedly lots of people are getting the "temporarily unavaiable" notice. Again that wasn't Pennyhost, it was me. I've actually been very surprized at the bandwidth's ability to storm through this. Anyways there is discussion regarding this article, and the OpenP2P article, at http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=01/02/26/1756207&mode=thread.
Feb. 27th, 2001
A user from the Netherlands has considerately pointed out http://www.jalda.com/home/, which is a system much like what is talked about here. One thing that I especially like about the Jalda method is that it incorporates "phone cards" to put money into your account: Excellent idea! That allows people without credit cards to set up micropayment accounts, but more importantly opens the possibility of totally anonymous access: i.e. Set up a micropayment account as an anonymous user and put money into it using a card you bought from a local variety store for $20 (which of course also eliminates the credit card surcharge from being charged to the micropayment house which lowers the cost of doing business which ensures that transaction fees are incredibly low). I have no doubt that governments would claim that such access somehow would encourage the drug trade, or some other ridiculous claim in efforts of enforcing an ultimate tracking system, so upper limits would have to be incorporated into anonymous accounts, but for most purposes they should work great. Some of the feedback I have gotten has indicated that people rightfully have privacy concerns given that theoretically the micropayment house will know every site you visit and everything you buy, and such a "phone card" system could alleviate that.
March 12th, 2001
And another house of cards that is net advertising starts to crumble to the ground. Look here, here, or here regarding the apparent inner details of a company involved in supporting content on the net. Scary. Every day I wish more and more that a practical micropayment solution comes to fruition. If any Venture Capitalists would like to send me a couple million dollars I will get right on it! ;-)
May 20th, 2001
I'm an F1 fan (the perfection of engineering that goes into these cars is captivating) and as such I like to read news and information regarding the sport. One of the primary sites I use is http://www.atlasf1.com. Over the past couple of days it has gone to being a pay site. I've yet to sign up for a couple of basic reasons: 1) It's yet another place that I have to give my credit card to and worry that they don't get haxxored, etc. For those who say "Oh but don't worry, it's insured", please realize my worry is the hassle of getting a new card and then informing the cell phone company, etc. of my new numbers and expiry, and 2) What if they go under (as many sites do)? I don't feel comfortable paying for 3 months when this is a new initiative that may fail in the coming weeks, and I'm not going to grossly overpay by paying by 2 week intervals. I've yet to figure out what I'll do. Let me say that if there was a system where I could enter the maximum per day/week/month and authorize them, I would sign up in a second. So here is a perfect example where I think the content is fantastic, but the traditional credit card method of paying is woefully inequipped to handle the net's needs.
June 19th, 2001
I've written a quick synopsis of
the state of affairs after the suck.com stopped producing fresh content.
Additionally I've noticed a lot of hits coming from
lowendmac.com, and I
appreciate the link, however I notice that they come in on page 3 and most fail
to notice that there were prior pages. For the record the intro page is right
here.