#tanstaaflps — Public Fediverse posts
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@babelcarp Here's the thing: PAYMENTS COST MONEY.
That is, there is a cost to implementing, instituting, operating, and maintaining a payment system. And it is startlingly high.
You're better off paying the bulk rate. You are already paying that bulk rate through the existing advertising-based media system, and it is more than sufficient to cover the entire publishing industry's present income, probably several times over.
There's a similar issue in sales. The cost of sales, that is, the expense of supporting a salesperson and operation is often 50% of all revenues. I'd become aware of this through New Relic, which pioneered a very low-touch sales track (effectively: free for a minimal implementation, and automated zero-touch upsell subscription basis for most small/medium businesses, with enterprise sales having a formal sales operation). NR still ultimately reported fairly industry-standard cost-of-sales numbers after going public.
With micropayments, there's the processor's cut, again tends to run high: Google Play's standard cut is 30% (15% on the first $1m in revenues), Apple Store tends to run similarly.
With subscriptions or bundled payments ... the individual accounting falls away, and billings are simply periodic and tranched by service level (with usage-based billing for large accounts, though often at highly-discounted rates).
To mangle a tired old phrase: There's no such thing as a free lunch-payment system.