Micropayments Rears Its Ugly Head … Again!

By Alex in Blogs & Internet on Feb 15, 2009 at 1:20 am

Rex Sorgatz of Fimoculous wrote an interesting post about that on-again, off-again idea of micropayments (when the economy is bad and ad revenues are down, proponents of micropayments pop up like mushrooms after a rainy day).

Whether you agree with him or not, some of the things he proposed are intriguing:

And here’s how it works…

1) When you click a link to a story — from Google, from a blog, from NYTimes.com, from whatever — the article appears as it normally does, except the Subscription Center lightbox appears over it, with the text opaquely visible in the background.

2) You are given a few options to quickly choose from: pay for the single article or buy a weekly/monthly pass.

3) If you already have an account (and if you’re a NYTimes.com user, you do), clicking "Buy" will cause the lightbox to disappear. You can begin reading the story. Instantly.

4) You will not be charged for anything until you accumulate $5 of charges. At that point, you will be asked to enter your credit card or PayPal information, if you haven’t already.

Tags: micropayment, Rex Sorgatz

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Robin Sprocket
Feb 15th, 2009 at 9:34 am
Okay, but only if I can pay in Lindens….
D Bozko
Feb 15th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Bad idea. There isn’t too much I’d pay for just to look at or read. Subscribing to certain things I can understand, but paying just to read one article? What if you never go back, would you owe them a dollar forever? It will probably happen in one form or another but I’m not going to like it.
just a guy
Feb 15th, 2009 at 3:27 pm
This won’t catch on. there’s too many sources on the net where you can get the same info for free who WON’T participate in micropayments on principle.
Tony LaRocca
Feb 15th, 2009 at 10:23 pm
Yet another sign that the Information Age has mutated into the Advertising Age…
DonS
Feb 16th, 2009 at 12:09 pm
I can go back 9 years and find invoices never paid by online retailers no longer in business. I remember the Marketing Presentations well, lots of free food in the conference rooms. It was a bad idea then and a bad idea today. History does repeat itself and no one ever learns.
amanderpanderer
Feb 16th, 2009 at 12:51 pm
The idea is always horrible, a subscription payment makes more sense.
PK
Feb 16th, 2009 at 11:17 pm
I wonder how many of those people opposing micropayments are using EZ-Pass, iTunes Store, iPhone App Store, or any Pay-per-view. There are tons of ways they are already making micropayment revenues off you, they just aren’t called “micropayment”, and they are most likely not books or written articles.
The El Bee En
Feb 17th, 2009 at 7:42 am
This dog won’t hunt! Heck, I don’t like paying to view “adult educational material” paying to read the NYT or the WSJ…not a chance!
Alegent Kidd
Jul 20th, 2009 at 2:18 pm
What a great way to keep people from using your site. Information has within it, an ultimate destiny to become free, and anyone who charges for it is an endangered species. VERY few things are worth paying for online. MAYBE the wsj for some people or anthroporn for the addict, but not news services.

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