Micropayments for accessing content isn’t a new idea, nor an idea that has been tremendously popular (or successful) to date, but it could provide a supplemental revenue source for those bloggers and webmasters with content worth charging pennies instead of dollars. Sites like Bitpass and Peppercoin make low cost selling of content attractive. But what about bloggers or webmasters who want to put a simple, straightforward (and insecure) web gateway?

Here is where Pixelpass (pictured above) hopes to enter the marketplace allowing webmasters and bloggers to charge in 25 cent increments from $.25 to $2 to access their sites/pages/blogs in a non-recurring monthly subscription. Before getting too excited, might want to read the Pixelpass FAQ and try the demos (my emphasis below):

The PixelPass system was designed to encourage your users to buy subscriptions, not prevent theft. The obscuring layer can be subverted by doing a “view source” or by cutting and pasting your content. If you want to sell “one time” content (like archives from a newspaper), PixelPass is not for you. But if you have regularly returning users (on a blog for example) then PixelPass is the perfect subscription solution.

Color me cynical, but I think if something like this became even slightly popular, programmers would create GreaseMonkey scripts or turn off Javascript in their browsers to break the system in nanoseconds. This is pretty much using the honor bar concept, which is intriguing in terms of monetizing content but when you factor in that this deal comes via a 60/40 split, PixelPass (who is getting a flat 40% of the transaction cost) is getting a pretty good deal for collecting bulk $5 subscriptions from website regulars.

Actually, I’m guessing that it’s the credit card processor or whomever is doing the backend processing is getting the best deal here. Who needs to give these folks any more cash? I doubt that Pixelpass is clearing all that much money out of their 40%. Just a guess there.

I like creativity in business and marketing — and if I wasn’t at least curious then I wouldn’t be blogging about it here — but I’m admittedly skeptical. I definitely do not want to insinuate that most surfers are thieves, but if you have GreaseMonkey scripts stripping advertising then where is the conscience in stripping something like Pixelpass? Yes, I realize it’s beta — almost everything is beta these days — but I would like to see some real world case studies where somebody actually makes this one work. Where they turn those pennies into real dollars.

Personally, I think I’d sooner put up my own honor bar Javascript obscure layer with a Paypal donation request. Then readers could just click to get past that system. At least in that case I’m keeping a lot closer to 100% of the revenue and I’m not testing the reader’s JavaScript savvy. Sadly, IMO, a Pixelpass setup on a technology blog where most readers are well versed in web technologies has about as much chance as a moth surviving a tornado.

Maybe somebody from Pixelpass will stop by and share some more details and thoughts in the comments or trackback section. I’m not trying to blogbash them here, but I’m wondering who/what/where this type of micropayment service is aimed at/for?

Did this post make you go hmm?

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