Micropayments experiment

Aaron Schiff started an interesting experiment the other day at 26econ.com:

What if you could make a micropayment simply by clicking an attractive button. I’m interested to know how much people would tip if it were that easy to do. For the next little while, you’ll see a set of buttons underneath each post. After reading the post, I want you to click the button corresponding to how much you’d tip me for that post. If you think it’s not worth tipping, don’t click any button.

The problems Aaron points out with exclusively using methods such as PayPal to tip (”it costs too much to transfer money securely, and it’s too much trouble for users”) are some of the reasons we decided to go with the top-up idea for people who want to use Karmafan to support more than one artist or site. Allowing a fan or a reader to support what they like without worrying about transaction costs seems like the best way to encourage multiple small acts of patronage.

We’re looking forward to seeing the results from the 26econ.com experiment.