Testing an Ad-Free Microtransaction Utopia 248
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by
Soulskill
from the nobody-likes-to-see-how-the-internet-sausage-is-made dept.
from the nobody-likes-to-see-how-the-internet-sausage-is-made dept.
MrAndrews writes "After reading a Slashdot story about adblocking and the lively discussion that followed, I got to wondering how else sites can support themselves, if paywalls and ads are both non-starters. Microtransactions have been floated for years, but never seem to take off, possibly because they come off as arbitrary taxation or cumbersome walled-garden novelties. Still, it seems like the idea of microtransactions is still appealing, it's just the wrapping that's always been flawed. I wanted to know how viable the concept really was, so I've created a little experiment to gather some data, to put some real numbers to it. It's a purely voluntary system, where you click 1, 2 or 3-cent links in your bookmark bar, depending on how much you value the page you're visiting. No actual money is involved, it's just theoretical. There's a summary page that tells you how much you would have spent, and I'll be releasing anonymized analyses of the data in the coming weeks. If you're game, please check out the experiment page for more information, and give it a go. Even if you only use it once and forget about it, that says something about the concept right there."
Flattr (Score:2, Informative)
Have you teried/seen Flattr [flattr.com]?
I'm not affiliated with them or anything, I stumbled across that while reading a blog post and I liked the idea. I have yet to find a page that I would give a Flattr to, but the idea is compelling.
Re:this isn't really testing the hard part (Score:5, Informative)
Are you familiar with Flattr [flattr.com]? It's structurally quite similar to what you're discussing, so might be worth a look. One difference is that you don't pick how much you want to pay each site. Instead, you decide how much you want to spend per month total, and then you just flag sites with "pay this guy". Your monthly payment is divided equally among all flagged sites. So e.g. if you pay $1/month and click the button on 20 sites, they each get $0.05.
Some pros/cons to that model, but one aspect that I think is a good idea in that approach is that it consolidates the "hump" of laying out expenditures to one decision, that of signing up for Flattr to begin with. Clicking on sites during the month doesn't cost you more, but just redistributes the money you already paid, so there may be less mental resistance to doing so. On the other hand, it also means there's no real way to signal that you liked both Things A and B, but A a lot more.
Re:No actual money is involved (Score:5, Informative)
Whether money does or doesn't exist is materially linked to the value of that money. That's the difference. I read, you did not. You disagreed with my point, then made up shit to justify your opinion. You never addressed my original point. The same one girlintraining missed. The prison didn't need to be real because it was unrelated to what was being studied. The money must be real to get valid results regarding spending habits..
Re:Or (Score:5, Informative)
how about non-shitty websites?
I'd settle for that. sites like techreport that will ban people for daring to mention adblock need to go fuck themselves. They say they can't live without ads. That's how lazy they are. Are they unique? No, escapist did the same thing. [techdirt.com]
Even if it's been debunked before, people still trot out the "how do we live without ads"? phrase as if it's a question.
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20100306/1649198451.shtml [techdirt.com] = answer.