After reading that Rupert Murdoch is going to start charging money to see his online news sites, the thought occured to me to wonder how much people would pay to read blogs such as mine, and whether it’d even be technically practical. Assume that I wanted to charge one penny to view a picture… you could read the article and see the thumbnail, but clicking on the thumbnail to see the full-rez view would charge you one cent. In order for people to not simply turn the computer off and go and have some sort of life, the process would have to be essentially invisible: you want to see the picture, you click on it, boom, there it is. Not like ordering one of my products via PayPal, which involves more steps (but which is still very easy and completely worth it, and if you don’t immediately head out and buy something of mine, you’re a dirty commie).
Has anyone ever heard of such a process, either in use or in development? I don’t imagine that charging much more than a penny or a dime per image would be worth it for most people, but if it was seamless, it might be a way to keep me in the poverty with which I have become accustomed. You’d see thumbnails like the ones below, click, and I’d be a penny, a nickle, a dime richer, and you’d be able to experience the awesomeness that I’ve put forth.
4 Responses to “Microcharging”
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Scott, anything I heard on this type of things has to do with some sort of electronic penny pocket. You recharge it with, say, 10 dollars and there you go. A lot of academic journal aggregator do this, although the sums involved are higher than 1 cent. Same happensa with photo rights selling agencies (like Corbis). Never investigated if there is some sort of third party service offered and the way they make it payed by customers (assume start-up fee plus a percentage.). In the mobile world there are a lot of content sellers that charge directly on your phone bill or rechargable card, that works like a ready-made penny pocket. All in all, make the photos on your blog viewable only to payers change the scope of it. You are now using your blog to bring up attention to your site and the things you sell in it. Now, if your blog become a shop, too, you lose a marketing tool. From my experience, if you manege to find a way to make the payment experience seemless, you’d better re-organize the blog in two levels, one open to all for free as an atention catcher and a second level (hi-res phootos ?) with pay-per-view. End of ramblings.
Cheers
Yay! I once again eluded being branded either Dirty or a Communist.
The Reich Dreams are great stuff!
>You are now using your blog to bring up attention to your site and the things you sell in it.
In small part. The blog, which I resisted starting for half a dozen years or so (thus the name), is intended to serve 4 purposes, of which “blatant self-serving commercial promotion” is only 1.
In any event, the idea was just a passing thought. The processes are not in place, I think, for the concept to work. And internet surfing is generally just too “flighty” for this sort of idea to be of much value.
OK. Lets us get this shit straight. When people actually “charge” me for the news they can no longer lie, their political bias will disappear, and they will keep their shitty assed opinions to themselves. Otherwise I will continue on as I have operated for the last 40 years, and they can kiss my fat, white ass.
Basically, they will have to follow the Porn Model. People get exactly what they pay for, or get fucked over when they get it free. Kinda like it is right now.