Micro-payments: An Alternate to Adsense?

The success of the web has been it's being predominantly free. And with web2.0 coming in, it is more free than ever before. And how can you beat a craigslist, which is almost 100% free.
But the larger question is how sustainable is it? We will revisit Craigslist in a later post, and build a case around that, too - but later.

For now I wish to tackle the problem , as i perceive, of the business model of most web2.0 companies based on sweat, free content, and adsense revenue. Generate lots of traffic, and get people to go to other sites, so that you can make money. And people probably go to other sites that are similar. And I think this model is fundamentally flawed.

So I would like to turn the whole model on it's head. I would like to make the whole content paid. Yes. All content.

The whole web would work on micro payments. Visit a site, read a page - pay $0.001 cent or some such. The amount you pay could depend on user ratings, frequently visited, etc (just the way a lot of web2.0 works).

Of course there are tonnes of problems implementing such a system - has the page been read, should children not browse the net, payment a function of time spent on the page, cost of implementing micro-payments more than the payments, what is the payment aggregator (each of this will potentially become a post) - but it is not flawed like the model of getting people to go away from your shop, if you wish to make any money.

Why Adsense is Flawed

You wish to make money. Sure.

You can write. So you decide to be a journalist. You wish to write and be paid for it. That is understandable.

So you write. Publish it on the web. Popularize it, get people to come to your blog. Then you pray that they go away, so that you can make money. This is the difficult part.

Well that is how adsense works! You make money when people go away from what you have to offer!!

Now, we know Google has made tonnes of money out of this, and there are businesses that are making a lot of money purely out of this sort of thing. And every now and then I come across people whose whole business model is to depend on adsense to make money, and some of them are simply being naive.

To me, something like adsense is flawed at the roots, and would be replaced by something better in a few years. Again, to stick my neck out, adsense would go when all content is paid - but that is for a later post.

My Do's and Dont's about adsense:

• If you have loyal readership, and are sure that readers will comeback, even if they go away, use adsense.
• Use adsense when it is logical for users to explore further before they make a decision, or you have nothing more to offer.
• Dont distract users from your main content.
• Let adsense look distinctly different from the look and feel of your site (not sure, but gut-sense).