By Dave Long on Thursday, February 22, 2001 - 10:39 am:
You can read about on the main page right now. But there's also a big Phorum thread there too. I think it's a great idea to be honest. Anything to help them get something in their pockets is a good thing. I'd seriously consider it Mark, Tom.
Penny Arcade
Phorum
--Dave
By Supertanker on Thursday, February 22, 2001 - 01:09 pm:
I like the idea of micropayments, and this seems like a step in that direction. Also, PA seems to be doing this as one way of many to make some money, and not the only way. That makes it seem a little less like begging.
Qt3 needs a Medici-like patron, similar to Bill Gates dumping money into Slate.
By Mark Asher on Thursday, February 22, 2001 - 01:52 pm:
I saw this on their messageboard:
"PA gets over 30 thousand unique visitors on comic strip days. But keep that under your hat we don't want that getting around;)"
That's pretty good traffic. Really good. We're nowhere near that.
The amount of money we'd get is so minimal I'd prefer not to aggravate people at this point. Besides, once we do something like that, it puts a kind of pressure on us to produce that we don't have now. Heh.
The situation for websites is indeed dire, though. Tom and I are lucky in a sense. We got in late and never made any money from this site and never came to depend on it, as a result. I have no idea what sites like Blue's News and Stomped are going to do. Those people made this their occupation.
By Steve Bauman on Friday, February 23, 2001 - 03:24 am:
When the amazon system started, one guy on Slashdot posted how he had a highly-trafficed site and popular site, and after two weeks with amazon's "tip" system he'd received all of 20 cents.
By Mark Asher on Friday, February 23, 2001 - 09:57 am:
"When the amazon system started, one guy on Slashdot posted how he had a highly-trafficed site and popular site, and after two weeks with amazon's "tip" system he'd received all of 20 cents."
It looks like Penny Arcade is doing better than that, but I think people will get tired of giving them money after a month or two. If they are getting about 30,000 people to look at the site, they need a healthy percentage of those people to give them money every month to make it.
Plus, if this is adopted by other gaming sites, then you'll have a situation where some of those 30,000 are starting to pick and choose who they give money too. I doubt this is a sustainable business plan. They still need ad revenue.