In my quest to find the ultimate in web-site monetization solutions, I came across Contenture.com today. If you visit the site, it boldly says, "Welcome to the Micropayment Revolution". Normally, web content providers utilize ads and links that people click on to produce revenue. According to Contenture, "The internet as we know it is unsustainable. Sites and services are closing left and right because ads often don't even cover the cost of the servers that are delivering the content."
What is Contenture's solution? Charge web-surfers $5.99 a month, take 20% off the top to cover its costs (versus the normal 50% Pay Per Click providers take), and then allocate the remaining monthly amount of $4.79 to the network of Contenture web-sites visited by the web-surfer during the month (thereby rewarding the web-sites most frequented by Contenture users). So Contenture users seem to pay out of the goodness of their hearts to keep their regularly frequented content providers in business. Scoonie and I thought about this for a minute and then said, "No"; so do we need to be more giving? Does it make sense to pay for something that is normally free?
Looking closer at the arrangement, I note that Contenture does have some features that may provide incentives for people to become a Contenture user. These features include giving paying members: (1) priority access to new articles, (2) exclusive access to their archives, (3) special commenting abilities, (4) an ad free experience on their network of web-sites, etc. Contenture calls these "premium level" features and/or "microservices".
Well, now that I think of it, the ad free experience may be worth the $5.99 a month to Scoonie if web-sites go to audio ads!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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