Micropayments are a hot topic these days in the world of artists, writers, music download sites, and small independent websites and publishers. The following post describes our experience over at Small Business Trends using the BitPass micropayments system to purchase content, specifically photographs.
From time to time we post photographs on the site to add visual interest to our pages. Most of the images come from istockphoto.com, using BitPass to purchase them.
Admittedly our sampling size is tiny — one person, me. But based upon my experience I can report that using BitPass on about 10 different occasions, the experience has been uniformly positive each time.
- BitPass is a Web-based system, so all I need is a browser — no software to download. The BitPass user interface is streamlined. Screens don't get much simpler to use.
- Setting up my account initially was quick and easy. Just the bare minimum of information is requested. I was not required to provide age, gender, household income, hobbies, mother's maiden name, or even number of pets.
- The way micropayments work is that you purchase credits for your account (similar to buying a gift card). That process was very easy, too. I was given several ways to pay, including PayPal and credit cards such as Visa and Mastercard. I chose PayPal, and the interfaces with the PayPal system worked without a glitch. My initial $3 (USD) was transferred from my bank account to my BitPass account instantly.
- Once I had a few dollars in my account, I went shopping. Off to istockphoto.com, where I downloaded photographs for $1(USD) each. Here again, using BitPass was fast and easy.
As a user, I saw only two issues: First, photographs are twice as expensive using BitPass versus istockphoto.com's own in-house version of micropayments ($1 versus $.50). Somehow BitPass is going to have to close that price gap. Second, outside of stock photographs, today there is very little content I would want to purchase using micropayments. Until there are more vendors offering desirable content who accept BitPass, usage will be limited.
Article comments
1 - TDavid
Another interesting micropayment service that we've been checking out is peppercoin