rogerd - 10:14 pm on Oct 7, 2010 (gmt 0)

I've been hearing about the promise of micropayments for more than ten years, and nothing has come of the talk. Logically, it would be a great way to monetize low-value content.

Before the Web took off, I used Prodigy. While they didn't have micropayments, they had some premium services (I seem to recall a business database tool) that charged a rather nominal amount per minute of use. I liked that model vs. an "all you can eat" subscription as I was a light user. I could go in, get what I needed, and only spend a dollar or so for a quick visit.

I could see it being annoying, even if effective. Imagine a site where you start reading an article and get to the end of the first page, where you find a "Pay $.50 to keep reading." Ugh.