
Providing a better compensation model for the internet - ph0rque
http://earlyretirementextreme.com/greshams-law-of-content-tipping-content-providers-and-providing-a-better-compensation-model.html
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shabble
It's a nice article, and the reference to Gresham's Law[1] is something I
haven't seen before applied to content.

The microtransactions idea isn't new, and as other people have said, the main
issue is adoption, by both producers and consumers. Making it voluntary after
the fact rather than a pay-wall might improve adoption, at a potential loss of
overall revenue.

As I see it, there are 3 main classes of blogs, from the author's perspective:

As a marketing tool - to gain readership by writing around the field you do
business in, and pointing them towards your products. You don't really care
about the money - it's part of your marketing/advertising budget.

As a hobby - writing about things you enjoy doing, but would like some small
amount of money as validation of your content quality, and to cover things
like hosting expenses and maybe to fund your hobby projects.

As a business - writing things with a direct emphasis on SEO, going for
maximum advertising revenue by targeting niche keywords, generating crappy
quality content from MTurk, etc.

All of those would benefit from tipping, but in all likelihood only the first
two would actually receive tips, and only the second really requires them.

Would it be enough to operate without/with reduced advertising? I suspect not,
but you might be able to tie some incentives into tipping like removing ads
from other content for the day/week/whatever. Would be an interesting topic to
research, but without a decent microtransaction system it's impossible to
know.

[1]
[https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gresham%27s_l...](https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/wiki/Gresham%27s_law)

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ghempton
The problem with all these tipping services is always traction. There is no
pain point for the consumers of content that is going to drive them to install
a bookmarklet like the one he suggests. This especially applies since all of
these services are unknown.

I would love to see an already established player like Disqus attempt
something like this.

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pault
Facebook.

They already have a credits platform, traction is obviously not an issue, and
their stupid "like" button is ubiquitous. It seems to me that they are poised
to solve the micropayments problem that so many others have failed on (Beanz,
etc).

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mechanical_fish
Could a third party bolt this on to Facebook with an app? Or are there legal
or technical barriers? (TOS violations, privacy policy violations?)

~~~
crizCraig
You'd have to proxy Facebook which is a TOS violation (I believe). Some German
site recently got busted for doing something like this.

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bengebre
Have any of you signed up for the service yet? It looks quite slick. I've
tipped a couple of people as well as verified my own website so that I can
claim tips that people leave for me. The really neat thing (as the ERE post
mentions) is that you don't have to sign up for people to start tipping you.
All the tips for a site are logged until you claim them as the site owner (via
meta tags or file upload). It's a great way to overcome the initial adopter
problem WRT getting people to accept your payment method. So website owners
don't need to install anything in order to accept tips. I'm interested to see
if this catches on. It's really great from both a concept and implementation
perspective.

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DenisM
I learned the hard way that there are two types of people - those who like to
talk and those who like to pay. The two groups pretty much do not overlap.

So if you start off with a free product, you get some mixture of both groups,
and when you start charging later you will only ever hear from the cheapskate
brigade.

For me that means making paid apps with a price of $2.99 or above. I'm not
sure what that means for writers...

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InclinedPlane
Whenever I see any new enthusiasm for micro-transactions I think of this:
<http://penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/06/22>

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ph0rque
Since this is very similar to TipJoy... ivankirigin, can you comment on
whether you think this company will succeed in the same space that yours did
not?

~~~
jarofgreen
Also tackling the same problem is <http://flattr.com/> , which is still going.

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klenwell
My version of this model would have the lowest possible barrier to usage such
that you don't need to register or authenticate initially at all. Let the user
provide some kind of identifying token, say an email address or Facebook ID
token, and a pledge amount. Tie it to whatever client data is offered (e.g ip
address or cookie). At some later date authentication and collection takes
place. A database in a cloud somewhere tracks all these pledges, their IDs,
and when and if they get authenticated and paid. The exact mechanism is left
as an exercise to the entrepreneur.

The key would be complete revocability. This would be necessary due to the
ease with which imposters could, for example, put your email address in a form
or spoof an ip address. But I think it also provides interesting data about
those who pledged, authenticated, and reneged. It could be tracked as a new
form is currency itself. It might also provide interesting data about the
origins of scams and spam on the internet.

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EGreg
To compete with free alternatives, you need ease of use, social proof or
loyalty. These can be monetized.

Perhaps a site where readers subscribe to info ahead of time and pay, and then
rate articles. People who write great articles get paid more.

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icebraining
Sigh. Why, oh why, do these sites use OpenID and not let me write my own
OpenID URL?

