The Case Against Micropayments about what makes an idea or a technology break through, written by Clay Shirky.

Shirky writes about charging for online material."There are three principal solutions to this problem offline - aggregation, subscription, and subsidy - that are used individually or in combination. It is these same solutions - and not micropayments - that are likely to prevail online as well."

To get a good overview of “Pricing on the web” also read these documents. Insightful, critical and creative.

• The importance of good pricing. Written by Evan Williams himself (founder of Pyra that makes Blogger:).
  
• Scarce goods no more, so what do we pay for? by Doc Searls, one of the authors of The Cluetrain Manifesto.
  
• Some actually sell content onlineand make a profit. With similar strategies they could also make a profit tomorrow. David Moschella lists some profitable content vendors.
  
• kuro5hin.org || Getting Paid for Content: from micropayments to shareware models
• Doc Searls: "...micropayments won't happen until customers have full control over the relationships that allow them to micropay for microservices and microproducts. And that won't happen until customers have full control over their own identities — and how those identites relate, as customers, to vendors..."

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