Friday 10 November 2006

ClicktoPay

I often have good ideas. But they come to nothing. Either no one is interested or I forget them and never use them. So I thought why not write them down and put them in a blog? Maybe, someone else might use them? Maybe someone would be inspired by them? I had this click to pay idea. It’s not exactly new – it sort of like Paypal but I think it’s better. So you will get the general idea take a look at the cartoon.
Do you think it’s funny? Now imagine you had a ClicktoPay account. You want a copy of the cartoon and you see a ClicktoPay icon in the corner and next to it the number 1. That means it will cost you just 1 cent to download it. Would you pay it? Maybe you would maybe you wouldn’t? But you are bound to see something that you would download. This is a pile it high and sells it cheap idea. The maximum number in the box can only be 99 so the maximum payment is 99 cents. The minimum payment is 0. Why give stuff away? Well some images could contain advertising and so given away free.

What else would it work for? It would work for any kind of image obviously. Would it work for Mp3 music? Certainly, it would be impulse buying at its best. Now if you want to download an MP3 you have to have an account and here in the UK it’s about 89p – that is $1.50 – a rip off. People think before they part with $1.50 but 10 cents? Which would you rather have 10,000,000 sales at 10 cents or 100,000 at $1.50? The former brings in $1,000,000 on impulse – it’s only 10 cents the latter is being greedy and only brings in just $150,000.

Would it work for software downloads? Yes, of course. The company would get income and advertising – like viral marketing but with income. How about ClicktoPay web pages? Yes, click to view a web page and it costs you 1 cent or so. But video is really expensive to produce – it wouldn’t work for video? It would work for video, it is being given away free now as part of viral marketing campaigns – ClicktoPay video would be great. Especially, if you could order a video and have it download when your computer is idle and then watch it when you wanted to. You wouldn’t need the whole lot downloaded – just enough so it wouldn’t keep stopping if you connection was slow. In the UK ADSL is still being upgraded and is often slow. New equipment going in to telephone exchanges next year should take it to 8 Mbs. But even so, downloading overnight would allow ISPs to give people better monthly download limits without adversely affecting their bandwidth.

Would ClicktoPay be useful for anything else? The limitations are only the limitations of our ingenuity. If it was done right it would give lots of people new opportunities. A company wanting to give away a free sample but not have the burden of postage costs could use ClicktoPay. Click the ClicktoPay logo at 99 cents and a few days later a CD or DVD arrives – your name and address for delivery is already held in the ClicktoPay database.

Could we have movies on DVD for just 99 cents? Yes, why not? I’m sure some large company would sponsor the movie for a little advertising before the actual movie starts. The really big boys would even do a 1 cent ClicktoPay pay DVD delivered right to your door!

Google adsense allows even people like me to put adsense on this blog and on my tiny 15 Mb website. If CicktoPay was run in a similar manner – unknown bands could use it to distribute their music. They may start at 5 cents a track and only get maybe 20,000 sales on their first track – but that is a $1,000! It would be good for cartoonists, artists, photographers, amateur video makers, programmers, web site owners and anyone wanting to sell something that costs less than 99 cents!

How about education? Yes, an educational CD or DVD would be great and you could get it for just a nominal payment using ClicktoPay. Maybe they could do one to teach me HTML! But it would have lots of uses for children and students who may be able to afford sponsored ClicktoPay DVD. A company like Coca Cola sponsor it and the ClicktoPay money gets it distributed.

Who has the technology to make this work? A number of companies, but companies like Google and Yahoo are the first to spring to mind. Google in particular are used to dealing with owners of small websites and dealing with large numbers of customers. Although their automated systems don’t always work quite right and they get complaints. The main one is invalid clicks on pay per click advertising. Some accounts have even been suspended as a result. I admit to invalid clicks on some of my advertising – on Googlepages! They weren’t added to my account and Google didn’t tell me which channel the invalid clicks where on. Could do better Google! That is a problem both Yahoo and Google have. They try to deal with consumers using automatically generated emails that threaten to close accounts and do close accounts. A responsible adult should check the situation out before an account is closed. We English are very sensitive to threats – even if it is only to close an email account that we don’t particularly need anyway.

This is my first “ideas” blog. Please leave comments. Do you want more “ideas” blogs written by yours truly? Did anyone from Google read this? In the meantime visit my tiny website and if the advertisements by Google look interesting – don’t ignore them. Some are quite good! On my last blog was an advert for doing your Lottery online. This time tomorrow, I could be a millionaire…. Lol.
In the meantime check out my tiny 15 Mb website:
Best wishes to all my friends in the UK and overseas….

Mike10613


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