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May 8, 2006 :: Volume 2, Issue 4
Next Issue: May 2007

A Micropayment for Your Thoughts

Posted by TimSlavin at December 2, 2003

"The trick for micropayment companies is to convince Web surfers that there's so much good online content available for nickels and dimes that it's worthwhile to bother stocking a prepaid account with a few bucks.

But some critics believe that will never happen en masse because of fundamental economic psychology: Few people are willing to spend time deciding whether to buy things individually, like newspaper articles, for pennies. That is why subscription models that bundle a huge amount of content are attractive."

Good discussion about micropayments from Wired. The kicker is the last paragraph or two: coding micropayments might be too easy to justify going through BitPass, Peppercoin, and other aggregators... I'd also add there is a social limit: people won't pay beyond a certain level, say $10 USD per month, and it's an open question about how much content that will buy. I think these bills (cable TV, internet access, phone, etc.) are quickly reaching the threshold monthly payment consumers are willing to fork out (probably $100-150 USD/month for all). BTW, content on this site is still free and will stay that way.

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