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In the dawn of the Internet, one technology that was "right around the corner" was micropayments.
Micropayments as defined by Wikipedia
Despite some great effort in that direction, there has been little success. There is no universal, easy to use, easy for websites to implement, micropayment mechanism. Some say iTunes is a successful micropayment platform, but that is successful only for Apple, and considers 99 cents a micropayment.
I was thinking today, how our Lit experience could be transformed if 1 cent micropayments could be supported.
Voting is how we get our "payment" for writing here. We get the ego boost from seeing votes made. Even better, we get a boost from feedback and public comments. But people can vote without commenting, and we all know the power of trolls. Besides, votes, 1's and 5's, without comments are not as satisfying, at least to me, as comments. Why did you like it? Why didn't you? Do you dislike the story, or all stories in this category, or stories by me? Sometimes, I wish you could see each individual vote, and be able to see the other votes that person has made. Manu? Idea here. That way, if someone votes me a 1, and votes a 1 for every story in the category, I can take the vote with a grain of salt.
But back to micropayments. What if there were micropayments on Lit? I could see it set up so that when you vote, you can accord it any amount of money from a penny to $5.00. That way, someone can help a story, but not hurt it. And the writer gets a modest amount of money for their efforts.
There could be reports where the stories are listed by total income, total income for the last month, total income for the last six months, highest average monthly income (so that the story that has generated $500 a month for the six months it has been on ($3000) , ranks over the story that has generated $6000 but taken three years go do so.) and so forth.
There could even be a mechanism where writers could make their stories available only if you paid say 5 cents a read. That way, writers who have earned a following, and have free stories at the top of the financial lists, can lead those readers to newer stories that require a payment. There can be popularity / income lists for those too.
We wouldn't get rich, but I think we'd get a more honest feedback mechanism.
if only...
Comments? Thoughts?
Threadjacks? Insulting comments about my parentals?
Micropayments as defined by Wikipedia
Micropayments are means for transferring very small amounts of money, in situations where collecting such small amounts of money with the usual payment systems is impractical, or very expensive, in terms of the amount of money being collected. "Micropayment" originally meant 1/1000th of a US dollar,[1][2], meaning a payment system that could efficiently handle payments at least as small as a tenth of a cent, but now is often defined to mean payments too small to be affordably processed by credit card or other electronic transaction processing mechanism. The use of micropayments may be called Microcommerce.
Despite some great effort in that direction, there has been little success. There is no universal, easy to use, easy for websites to implement, micropayment mechanism. Some say iTunes is a successful micropayment platform, but that is successful only for Apple, and considers 99 cents a micropayment.
I was thinking today, how our Lit experience could be transformed if 1 cent micropayments could be supported.
Voting is how we get our "payment" for writing here. We get the ego boost from seeing votes made. Even better, we get a boost from feedback and public comments. But people can vote without commenting, and we all know the power of trolls. Besides, votes, 1's and 5's, without comments are not as satisfying, at least to me, as comments. Why did you like it? Why didn't you? Do you dislike the story, or all stories in this category, or stories by me? Sometimes, I wish you could see each individual vote, and be able to see the other votes that person has made. Manu? Idea here. That way, if someone votes me a 1, and votes a 1 for every story in the category, I can take the vote with a grain of salt.
But back to micropayments. What if there were micropayments on Lit? I could see it set up so that when you vote, you can accord it any amount of money from a penny to $5.00. That way, someone can help a story, but not hurt it. And the writer gets a modest amount of money for their efforts.
There could be reports where the stories are listed by total income, total income for the last month, total income for the last six months, highest average monthly income (so that the story that has generated $500 a month for the six months it has been on ($3000) , ranks over the story that has generated $6000 but taken three years go do so.) and so forth.
There could even be a mechanism where writers could make their stories available only if you paid say 5 cents a read. That way, writers who have earned a following, and have free stories at the top of the financial lists, can lead those readers to newer stories that require a payment. There can be popularity / income lists for those too.
We wouldn't get rich, but I think we'd get a more honest feedback mechanism.
if only...
Comments? Thoughts?
Threadjacks? Insulting comments about my parentals?
