

Ask YC: Your thoughts on this micropayments idea? - aaronblohowiak

For site owner: sign up for micro payments service like an ad network, but the pay goes the other way -- you get paid $X CPM, and in exchange, you may not show other ads on the page.<p>For browser: You have an account with the ad/micropayment network and instead of seeing ads, your money goes to the content creator of the site.<p>The ad networks already have deals with content sites, and people generally want to support the content they like.  You could have "premium" content that is behind a simple click-through gateway that authorizes a higher payment (but with some cap so the fraud liability is small.)<p>Better improvement would be to allow interop between potential micro payment networks, and handle it all transparently for the user.<p>Benefit to the user: history of all the ad-free content they have seen, supporting their content providers. Benefit to the content owner: higher CPMs.
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jmount
I think it was Hank Williams (blog: "Why Does Everything Suck") that pointed
out that advertisers can not afford to buy ads on sites using this kind of
model. The customers that micro-pay out of seeing the ads are exactly the
small minority that the advertisers were hoping to hit in their blanket
campaign. So the remaining traffic is worthless to advertisers- so better just
to run it as a pure subscription site (which also has not worked well).

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AlexeyMK
Its a great idea, but I'm not sure its feasible.

To subscribe, browsers have to go out of their way (interrupt their normal
browsing experience) and join in. There's a better user experience by simple
installing AdBlockPlus. And if you ARE willing to go out of your way, just use
TipJoy or a similar service to donate to the site - PayPal would be better,
actually, given the number of people who already have PayPal accounts.

The parallel is with music, I'd think: You're looking to launch a subscription
service when most people will just download the content for free or buy what
they want to support off of iTunes. Only, your case is even worse:
Napster/Rhapsody are doing moderately well with subscription models, and to
get the rights to those subscription models, they have deals in place with the
4 major labels. The blogging (even the A-list blogging) community is much less
consolidated - you'd have to strike an incredible amount of agreements to make
your service universal.

But you're thinking in the right direction.

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AlexeyMK
Actually, how about this:

Integrate with AdBlockPlus. If you pay, there are no ads ANYWHERE. Then,
collect donations for EVERYONE. As a blogger, I don't need to have signed up
to you, the money is being collected just the same.

Then, begin contacting bloggers and letting them know that they have X in an
account with you, and they'd probably want to collect it. That would work.
That would work and it would be best done by the AdBlockPlus people.

Edit: AdBlockPlus is (from what I gather on their website) OpenSource and
currently lacking a business model. You could probably start working from
there on, like AdBlockPlus, Good Samaritan Edition or something

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99Frogs
Idea would probably need to be sold to paypal, or even a credit card company,
maybe integrated by google, firefox, or IE to gain mainstream use.

Incentives like "tip over $20/month and enjoy an add-free web experience" for
a browser add-on.

People are too lazy to add money to an account in order to tip.

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siong1987
If I were you, I will never work on ideas that involves transactions of money.
It really involves too much security problems. But, I am not discouraging you.
Your idea is cool. And, I could see the future of it if everyone is using it.
And, I really believe that many people prefer ad-free internet. But, I am not
sure that whether people will pay for an ad-free internet or not.

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RobGR
Maybe you could market it in a way targeted to anti-consumerists ?

You would probably want a directory or search engine which covered the people
who had signed up. You could promote it as an "ad-free search engine" to bring
traffic to your customers.

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vaksel
the problem with micropayments is that you need to invest a ton of money into
making your average person use it casually.

