

Some people like to pay. Let them.  - sivers
http://sivers.org/ppay

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tophat02
I feel this way about Mint.com. They're a great site, but I would gladly pay a
premium to not be offered "deals" and to be given features (like advanced
envelope budgeting and the like) that may be at odds with their advertising
interests.

The only problem is that there's no place for me to put my credit card. Why
not, Mint?

~~~
theBobMcCormick
Could this be a good opportunity for a Mint competitor? I know there's a
couple of them out there, but unless I'm mistaken they're completely pay only
or they're free only like Mint.

~~~
redorb
a startup that was filling the gray because black and white were taken, isn't
going to fare well especially in such an expensive market to get into. Mint
has gotten 17.8mm in its 3 year existence

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reduxredacted
Completely agree.

He mentioned Pandora and that was the first service that came to mind for me.
I wanted a way to donate to them, but couldn't find it (frankly, I didn't look
very hard either, I'm sure if I sent an e-mail they'd find a way for me to
send money).

A year ago I purchased a "registered" copy of 7-zip for $20 some odd dollars
because I wanted to support the development of that application. It afforded
me e-mail support or something like that, but I have never bothered the
developer. I just loved the application.

I don't command a six figure income. I'm also the sole financial provider for
a family of four. I recognize value when I see it. It is a sort of "tip" to
the people who I'm reaping benefits from and I have no problem showing my
gratitude monetarily.

So ... another way to look at this is ... you have a winning product if people
are asking for ways to pay you for what you're giving away.

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edawerd
This is a really fresh approach to asking for money, and also can be applied
to art. It reminds of what my hero, Richard Feynman, who was reluctant to ask
for a price for his drawings, later said about art:

"I understood that to sell a drawing is not to make money, but to be sure that
it's in the home of someone who really wants it; someone who would feel bad if
they didn't have it."

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dangrover
There are too many free services and free apps and not enough good ones.

There's nothing wrong with asking for money -- it does the world a great
service if you've got something that can perpetuate itself and has to improve
to stay alive. (As opposed to something that sucks that's defensible because
it's free)

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hyperbovine
I think Derek Sivers has a lower marginal utility of income than your average
schmo. :)

~~~
carterschonwald
well, thats a simple consequence of having more income though!

Question: what is the right decay rate for the utility of each additional
dollar of income in terms of overall buying power (assuming sane spending
habits/hobbies)? I'd think it be zero up till some range, then sublinear, then
some moderate polynomial, then a slow exponential?

Any thoughts?

~~~
Shamiq
I would say some kind of second derivative positive, quadratic function.

    
    
                  /
                 /
                /
      _________/
    

(That's the best I can do for the -decay- rate).

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swolchok
"some people want to pay" is not sufficient to justify implementing a
"freemium lite" (term is my own) version as advocated in the article. How many
people will pay? How much will they pay? Is the product of those two figures
in the same ballpark as the cost of developing the "freemium lite"
differences, accepting payment, dealing with support emails from people who
expect things they pay for to Just Work, etc.?

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noss
This made me think about this post:

[http://jlouisramblings.blogspot.com/2009/04/premise-as-
soon-...](http://jlouisramblings.blogspot.com/2009/04/premise-as-soon-as-
movieepisode-is-out.html)

But there are probably other applications where there is an obvious customer
demand, but no one seemingly interested in collecting money or operate the
business the way customer demand is.

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stcredzero
Tipjoy! <http://tipjoy.com/>

~~~
rewind
I don't think that's a good solution for a lot of cases. When a service is
free and everyone gets the same thing, something usually has to change if
you're going to get anything for it. It doesn't have to be a lot -- could just
be to remove advertising or offer one or two extra-but-useful features -- but
I don't get the sense that most users will give their money to get the exact
same thing (for Web-based services, at least).

If your service is always free and you're looking to benefit from the people
who are willing to pay to get the same thing -- even though they don't have to
-- then TipJoy is a good solution.

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ja27
Shoemoney had a great post about how blogs and small businesses should be
using Amazon Wish Lists to let people with the money be able to pay more than
a couple bucks in a "tip jar".

[http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/12/23/income-from-donations-
am...](http://www.shoemoney.com/2008/12/23/income-from-donations-amazon-wish-
lists-rock/)

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graphene
I think this is less wacky than it sounds at first (I have a friend who pays
for his hotmail account). Perhaps this model could save/revive professional
journalism, by letting readers voluntarily contribute on a per-article basis?

~~~
stcredzero
Some journalism requires more resources than one person can usually command.
Perhaps celebrities could step in to raise funds in those cases?

There is a silly amount of $$$ spent by the military/industrial complex on PR.
(Several years ago the $ spent on armed forces bands was about the same as
NPR's budget.) Much journalism seems to be an arm of PR. Seems like PR is
replacing journalism. This only makes sense -- apparently there's a lot more
money in PR than journalism!

Independent journalism is vital for real democracy. Perhaps democracy is
doomed because journalism can't survive free information?

~~~
graphene
No, that's exactly my point; perhaps independent journalism, which doesn't
seem viable given current economic patterns, can become self-sustainable
through internet publishing and voluntary contributions by appreciative
readers. There's plenty of good journalism to be done with just an internet
connection, a phone and an inquiring mind, as long as you know you will be
reimbursed. At least I'd like to think so :-)

~~~
stcredzero
That only goes so far. And if you have people sitting in their apartments,
living off contributions and tips, isn't it going to be easy for the powers
that be to pay off a large number of bloggers? Won't the situation be
manipulated to recreate the one we have today -- journalism as just an
aggregate of PR from various sources -- just delivered more efficiently at
lower cost?

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thomasfl
Good point. Show people what good their money can do, like finance good music,
high quality open source software, and some people will actually donate money.

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aplusbi
This reminds me of this time in college when I was looking for the cheapest
legal copy of windows I could find. A fellow student kept insisting I pirate
it, and I told him I did not want to.

He could not understand why I did not want to pirate it and kept badgering me
to the point where I seriously considered reporting him for piracy (I didn't,
but it was tempting).

