In the world of billing schemes the novel idea emerged that it would be a good idea to charge the surfer just a little bit for every thing he downloaded. Download a movie from me pay me a nickel, download a picture gimmie a penny, so on and so forth. Its not new, its old. Its been dubbed “Pay As You Go”

There has been an ongoing attempt to get acceptance for it now for at least five years, it finally hit pay dirt in the realm of VOD and MP3 sales. Ambition being a never ending resource some people have even greater aspirations for the adoption of its use to further monetize free adult sites.

There are the dreamers who say that it would be a great idea to charge customers every time they look at your TGP (yeah right!) The theory is that if they buy so many tokens then the net becomes just a big flea market. Users may roam to whatever site they please and just spend spend spend.

I love niches, and believe me this is a niche billing concept. What i dont like is people trying to use a teacup for a bread basket. This has to be the silliest ideas i have ever heard of. To understand why its so idiotic you have to truely understand the psychology of surfers. Not only this you must understand the minds of webmasters as well.

Allow me to elaborate:

1. Competitve Disadvantage, BIG disadvantage to try and charge people for content that used to be free. Or to try and charge them for content they can get somewhere else for free. Or to try and force them into an esotic billing model they know little about.

2. Customer trust, none of the major billing companies are offering tokens as an alternative to credit cards and checks. The only company i would trust at this point is paypal and they have washed their hands of adult. So as a customer who must we demand they give their trust to now in order to view content?

3. Perspective, The content of most adult sites is either over exposed or exclusive. There is no incentive to offer micropayments for over exposed content, the best bet here is to tease and sell. For exclusives the lack of incentive here is perhaps the largest by far, why micropay when you can charge a premium.

4. Its still a credit card, at the end of the day the customer still has to bring out the credit card to buy credits.

Conclusion - You Cant Have Your Cake And Eat It Too
You are just giving up your profits to another third party, in this case perhaps hundreds. Yes that right just because someone buys credits to see your site doesnt mean he has to spend them all to see your stuff. So imagine the ad dollars and time spent by you to create a sell of tokens. Only for someone else like me to come along and figure out a way to advertise directly to token owners and benefit from your efforts.

You like sharing dont you? Not me i still like taking candy from small children and re-using aluminium.

At the end of the day the market decides what will work, but im advising all clients not to use this as a primary billing method. And not to use this as a billing method at all on premium products. It is still very experimental.

Thats all for now!