I was spending some time recently exploring the seemingly bottomless world of WordPress plug-ins – looking for a sidebar widget to showcase most popular posts.
One thing that popped up on a number of sites were requests for donations. They seemed pretty reasonable given that someone had spent the time to develop a plug-in, and wanted to be compensated for their work. In an ideal world, everyone would happily comply by throwing them, let’s say, a buck or two for something they could potentially use for months and months.
Unfortunately, donation and tip boxes across the Web probably gather an awful lot of dust while they patiently waiting for someone to click on them. Right now, the FreeWeb is alive and well in which no one seems willing to pay for anything no matter how valuable or useful it might be. (The exception being high-speed access, which has become a utility).
Few people people are willing to dig into their wallets (or Paypal accounts) for a great Web service or software or content. Instead, we’re counting on advertisers to foot the entire bill.
But what if free started to slowly disappear? What if Google wanted to charge a $1/month for GMail; would you pay it? What if WordPress wanted $2 to download its platform and $0.25 for an update; do you think bloggers who adore WordPress would consider it a worthwhile investment?
While I think the FreeWeb is a short-term gain, long-term pain scenario, it’s not going to disappear for awhile as long as service and content suppliers think they can get their fair share of the advertising pie. At some point, however, something is probably going to give – and we, the consumer, may have to start giving rather than just receiving.
Who knows, maybe the answer is a great micro-payment system – aka a mini-Paypal.
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Interesting question… In my opinion, with the current state of the Internet the sole idea of paying for gmail or wordpress for the sake of using it is ridiculous. If you start charging for a service that *was* provided as a free service in the past I see it as a step back in the product’s evolution and will try to change to one that’s free, or if I’m a developer (as I am) I would try to code/hack one myself (if I’m really desperate about it). But, if you don’t force me to pay, but ask for donations, I *might* pay you if you ask me in a polite way. Maybe the problem with donation boxes is that they fall into oblivion, even by the owners. If you keep promoting the donation and make campaigns as Wikia Foundation or the Creative Commons Foundation I’m sure more people would donate. If you don’t keep it fresh you die, it’s the Internet unwritten law. Again, if the Internet goes crazy and there are no other options (alas no possibility to code or use a free one) but to pay and it’s a critical software for me (like my dsl), I would pay. It all gets to the options you’ve got. No options = to pay, Plenty of options = google_the_next_shinny_free_blog_platform.
My two cents
“What if Google wanted to charge a $1/month for GMail; would you pay it? What if WordPress wanted $2 to download its platform and $0.25 for an update;”
My answer to both those questions is a resounding ‘yes’. Of course, I’d have to test drive them for a couple of months before reaching those conclusions, so the free trial is essential.
I’ve donated to Wikipedia, and bought a couple of Firefox t-shirts as a kind of pseudo donation to Mozilla.
Another potential micro-payment system is Amazon Flexible Payment Service.
I guess it really comes down to whether a service or product has enough value to convince people to pay for it. And as Alex suggests, you also have to take into consideration choice/options. If another free service/product exists that’s as good or just as good, then most people may happily switch than pay.
For something like WordPress, which is a superior blogging platform in my mind, I’d happy pay a small fee to support the cause. With Automattic getting $50 million in venture capital recently, this could happen sooner than we think.
I actually donate every now and then, since I think it’s only fair. I do, however, find it easier to pay for a license on great software (be it online or offline) if I get to try it out first, so maybe that’s a way for some WordPress plugin developers to go, although I think it’s hard since it’s so focused on everything being free in the first place.
Yes, the user base would be pissed of if micropayments were forced to update WordPress for instance, but I wouldn’t mind. I would, however, demand more, since I’m paying for it, and I’m not sure that’s a good thing.
I have donated on a few occasions to software I found helpful, but I would probably not donate for content.
I develop two open-source WordPress plugins, and I think asking for donations for a WordPress plugin is a bit tacky, just because they tend to be simple scripts that do one thing. Other than maybe Askimet, I can’t think of any WordPress plugins that really involve a substantial amount of code.
I have always found it odd that we will gladly pay $4.00 for a grande latte or $15 for a bottle of wine, yet we have trouble paying for some software that saves us an enormous amount of time or aggravation. $1 a month for Gmail, are you kidding?
I think if we could funnel some better compensation back to the developers, there would be an order of magnitude of more kick ass tools and widgets out there. The money shouldn’t just flow to those groups that can attract the audiences that advertisers want to see.