Comments on: Requiscat In Pass

By: Jon Rosenberg

Jon Rosenberg — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 13:40:32 +0000

First off, there’s nothing wrong with a little bit of knife-twisting.

Secondly, I would guess that the only respondents to the poll that have Bitpass accounts are the ones that picked the fourth option, as Nic says most folks are unable to resist a joke answer. That would align closer with the numbers we saw when we offered a Bitpass comic.

By: Howard Tayler

Howard Tayler — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:28:46 +0000

Bitpass (and by extension, this generation’s best hope for the micropayment model) failed because it tried to compete with other, less intrusive models.

“Advertising is less intrusive?” you ask incredulously. Well, yeah. I don’t have to decide to spend money. Ads intrude on eye-space, but not brain-space, and the internet has already taught me how to cordon off a chunk of eye-space. Heck, Television taught me similar tricks thirty years ago.

Merchandising is similarly non-intrusive. I don’t have to make the “buy this stuff now” decision if I don’t want to. I can just read, and move on, and sometime in the next few years the artist will get one $20 lump from me when I finally decide to plunk down change for a book.

As long as there are ad-supported and merch-supported comics out there I believe micropayments are going to remain a tiny niche. They will always be disproportionately significant when “how much we talk about them” is compared to “how much they actually matter.”

By: Sam Logan

Sam Logan — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 03:08:12 +0000

But lots of people DO buy the cow! Look at all the folks who buy book collections of webcomics, even when the entire contents are available online for free.

Of course, to buy a book online, you probably don’t have to open up an account with a new online financial service and load it up with money first.

Now if a bitpass account was something that everyone already had, then maybe more people would be inclined to use it. But it never had that one backer that made it ubiquitous. There was no ebay to bitpass’ paypal.

By: Paul Southworth

Paul Southworth — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:25:17 +0000

Nobody’s selling the cow. They’re selling merchandise BASED on the cow, and ad space on the side of the cow, so that all the people looking at the cow for free will see their product or service and want to purchase it.

The product or service may or may not be cow-related.

By: The William G

The William G — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 02:21:11 +0000

Why buy the cow when you’re getting the milk for free?

By: scott kurtz

scott kurtz — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 00:44:23 +0000

the problem is that a high-traffic in-demand content doesn’t need micropayments. You make more money from macro payments and advertising.

By: Nic

Nic — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 23:09:27 +0000

Actually, if anything, that poll will bias in favour of bitpass, as those of us unable to resist a joke answer* will be clicking stupid shit regardless of whether they actually had an account or not.

*ie me.

By: Sam Logan

Sam Logan — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 22:23:45 +0000

Bitpass failed because there wasn’t enough motive to get an account! You need to have some massively popular, highly in-demand content if you are going to convince lots of people to sign up, not a handful of smaller vendors that only appeal to a handful of folks.

Niche audiences only add up to something when you have bucketloads of niche vendors, and in order to attract that many vendors you need the kind of brand-awareness that comes with being used by a big name.

By: Gary Tyrrell

Gary Tyrrell — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 17:23:22 +0000

As I said, “highly unscientific”. But knife-tiwsting or not, of the 191 people who’ve added their votes (as of now), 75% are saying that they’ve never had a Bitpass account; the other answers, while jokey and dismissive of Bitpass, still only come to 25% of the responses.

Now those responses are clearly skewed in favor of Jon’s readership, but as he has one of the larger readerships in webcomics (participate in the survey, creators!), and one that is diverse in its reading habits, they’re probably slightly more inclined to have a Bitpass account than, say, the average PvP or Penny Arcade reader.

And since Jon’s readership has no motivation to claim an account (or deny one) based on his biases (in fact, they seem to take delight in tormenting him on occasion), I think that regardless of his motivation, the poll results are valid (within the bounds of statistical error, which is likely much larger than your standard +/-4.3%).

By: Christopher B. Wright

Christopher B. Wright — Mon, 22 Jan 2007 16:57:23 +0000

I also don’t think Bitpass had a chance in hell of succeeding, but given that the Goats poll was obviously intended to further illustrate Jon’s disgust concerning micropayments rather than actually inquire into the usage habits of his readers, don’t you think including that amounts to little more than knife-twisting?