Slashdot Mirror
Testing an Ad-Free Microtransaction Utopia
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."
Might skew the results a bit.
Go back to when people had web sites as a hobby and not this SEO, per click revenue blog spam shithole we have today.
... no one can be bothered to click 2c or 3c every time they stumble on a useful page. It's extra mental processing that distracts from what they're really doing, and the fact a page is useful might not be apparent until much later, long after they have left it. What happens if you make a payment and the advice on the page later turns out to be crap? Then there is the question of who the micropayments are going too: Some struggling blogger or hobbyist (worth supporting), a tenured academic (who is already taken care of financially) or a big company who needs my 2c much less than I do. You will also have issues like hosted content: are the payments going to the author, or the webhost.
Some sort of payment scheme is a good idea, but not like this. Often you'll find someone throw themselves into a freeware project and get disillusioned and abandon it when issues like paying the rent take precedence. I think the old 'Donate $5 with Paypal' is a good idea, if you can get rid of the Paypal, Visa, Mastercard or any other intermediary who might block payments. http://www.pcworld.com/article/242470/wikileaks_suspends_publication_because_of_financial_boycott.html
The trouble with microtransactions is they'll create an incentive for content publishers to "nickel and dime" readers.
Just look at phone and tablet games with "in app purchase" models. A great idea in theory. In practice, it drives the entire game design from "pay to play" to "pay to win".
If the content industry figures out how to make microtransactions work (a pretty big if)... just watch. Content will adapt from trying to attract and genuinely appeal to readers to a "nickel and dime" them to the maximum extent possible!
PJRC: Electronic Projects, 8051 Microcontroller Tools
I block ALL adverts on the net, i timeshift my TV so i can fast forward through the tv adverts, i rip my DVDs so i'm not forced to watch the trailers, i don't look at billboards or adverts on the side of buses or on bus stops or on walls or on people's clothes...
I pay to live in a house, i pay to access the net, i pay for tv, i pay for lights in the street, i pay for everyone else's healthcare, i pay the wages of my country's corrupt politicians, i pay 20% extra on nearly all products, i pay more tax on petrol than any other country.
My eyeballs are not for sale, if a site i frequent turns to microtransations i simply won't go there any more.
The problem is people hosting sites taking no responsibility for the ads on it. I never objected to regular old ads (and still don't), but started using ad-blocker when ads started popping up over the text I'm reading, singing, dancing around, popping up, over, and uner, popping up after I've navigated away, or running horrid javascript and flash that managed to consume most of my CPU cycles. Then there's the very much NSFW ads that pop up even when the page I'm reading is G rated. I vener had problems with the virus laden drive by ads since I use Linux, but that is a very valid reason to block ads as well.
There's only so many times you can kick someone in the crotch before they take countermeasures.
If sites ask nicely AND vet the ads they present, people might be willing to allow ads on those sites. It's more work, and so the ads might need to pay more, but they'll also be more likely to be actually seen by someone. That might be a tough way to go though since so many advertisers have effectively salted the earth.
Are you recording the lack of a click in some way, then?
Which of these is more meaningful?
60% chose 1 cent
30% chose 2 cents
10% chose 3 cents
Or:
90% chose 0 cents
6% chose 1 cent
3% chose 2 cents
1% chose 3 cents