However with Google Checkout there is not even a vague chance of success. It is designed for shops. You can’t sell anything in real time thus digital media of any kind is ruled out. Also there are no micro payments related features in there and monthly subscriptions are not there either after 3 years.

(Again, thanks in advance to anyone who reads and/or gives feedback. Big help.)

I, like everyone else alive, am in love with the Amazon system because its so easy, and I fully believe that if there was a super-site that had your credit card info and sold subscriptions to every site on the web it could and would boost the sales of web content subscriptions very significantly. First and most obviously (I’m going to explain some obvious stuff in this paragraph), it would make subscribing more convenient for users, and lessen the potential-for-cold-feet aspect that comes with someone having to take the time to fill out a long form for all the credit card information if they want to buy even a 99 cent subscription. This is a similar concept to how people spent money more freely when credit cards came along, because when you didn’t actually have to take the cash out of your wallet and fork it over (don’t have to fill out all your credit card info every time), it doesn’t feel as much like you are actually having to sacrifice anything to get the desired item (content), whereas if you actually have to fork over the cash or fill out the form, as opposed to swiping a card or pressing a button, theres always a much bigger chance that you decide in the end that it isn’t essential or that you’d be better off spending your money elsewhere. If web content subscriptions had been plugged in to Amazon for the past 5 years, I would have spent significantly more money for content I didn’t really need to buy, because there is already so much free content available that I don’t have enough time in the day to read 5% of the stuff I wish I could (for example, I am a HUGE Cuban fan and an aspiring entrepreneur who passed up a scholarship to Northwestern to do business full time, but today is the first time I’ve read stuff on this blog. Seems silly, but there’s so much out there I never got around to it. Now I am up in them middle of the night posting this instead of working on the zillion hours of work I need to get done, further proving that I don’t need more content in my life, especially content that I feel obliged to read because I paid for it.) Sorry for that tangent, and again, this stuff was obvious, and I don’t know why I took the time to explain that to you intelligent people.

My humble estimate (with no data to back it up) would be that if somehow Google managed to get all web content subscriptions on one platform Amazon-style (not including the packaging and auctioning concepts that I’ll address next), it would raise subscription sales to the already big and visible content providers by as much as 50% in the short term, though ONLY in the short term (I’ll explain further down). On the flip side, the packaging and auctioning concept would probably never work out for those big, relevant and visible content providers. It would take a ton of cooperation, a lot of ego swallowing, and some extra work, all to produce something that may or may not even help their bottom line. Would the packaging of subscriptions raise subscriptions enough that the extra revenue it would bring in would make up for the money lost by having to spend time changing their method of operating, and more importantly the money lost from lowering the cost of their subscription enough to make buying the package worth wile? There is a decent chance that the answer to that would be no, an unless the answer was proven to be a resounding yes I doubt these big and egotastic content providers would even consider taking this risk.

Now for the good part…

I saw a lot of references to the big and already visible content providers who may or may not take the risk of buying into this, but no mention of the people who are really going to benefit from this! There are so, so, sooo many amazing and intelligent people who provide excellent content all across the web for free and for a fee, and one big problem is that it is very hard to sift through the crap to find those people who truly do have great stuff to offer. This is why aggregate sites are becoming very popular, and why many people don’t even bother going to all kinds of different www’s anymore, and opt to only read things recommended to them on Digg, Facebook, or something of that sort. This increasingly popular means of navigation is really bad news for people who run small subscription based sites, because (for example) people don’t ever post links on their facebook to something that they know their friends don’t subscribe to, making it even harder than it already was (and it was already hard) for small and usually niche-oriented content providers to get noticed. I am a huge basketball fan; it is my passion, my hobby, my profession, and there may be dozens of sites that offer subscriptions to basketball related content that I would totally pay for, but I’d never know because I generally find my content from friends recommendations, aggregate sites, and bloggers such as Henry Abbott of Truehoop.com who links out to dozens of NBA articles daily (none of which you need a subscription for).

Now to actually get to the first actual point. Sorry for the way too long buildup, I realize a lot of the above stuff was already obvious. Please bear with me…

Imagine a site (with all of your credit card info already on tap) that not only had every single subscription on the web listed and organized for you, and allowed anyone to set up an account that enabled them to offer a subscription to their content (for whatever asking price they please for a small sign up fee and a small commission), but most importantly, had a system allowing happy or unhappy subscribers rate, discuss, evaluate, and promote all of the sites that they subscribe too. As I stated before, USA today isn’t going to see their subscriptions double from this, but a blog-in-my-parents-basement type of website with amazing content could go from unnoticed to having a huge demand in just a matter of weeks. Imagine there is a website out there right now that is run by three friends, and has 200 very pleased subscribers, but cant seem to convince enough extra people to subscribe in order for them to quit their day jobs and produce this brilliant content all day. But if these 200 subscribers were able to interact with others in this community to attract a few new subscribers, who in turn gave great feedback and attracted more subscribers, the eventual outcome could be these guys making enough money to start writing full time and shoot to the top of their field. USA today could raise sales 30%, but these 3 dudes just shot up sales 5000% because of they had access to this platform. Most importantly, as I’m going to explain below, many people would be able to go from sales of zero to being able to quit their day jobs to write.

Now to the awesome part and to bring it all home…

While the package deal system probably will never pan out with the big and already visible content providers, smaller sites with less at risk by trying this out could potentially gain a lot from it, particularly if sites with similar niches swallowed their egos and banded together. I am in the high school basketball content business, and outside of Rivals and Scout, there are very few sites that are capable of staying afloat while charging for subscriptions. There are about 4 or 5 popular content providers for Chicago high school basketball, and there is a ton of overlap with the community of people who visit each of our sites, and in the news that we report, as it is a very niche based and devoted community. If one of us tried to charge, everyone would just go to another site to get another version of that same news for free, so all of our sites are completely free except for the very expensive premium content for college coaches. However, if we all teamed up and made our sites a package deal, charging $10 a month to subscribe to all 5 sites, people would be forced to subscribe because outside of the 5 people that run those sites there is no one else well connected enough to do a good job gathering and reporting Chicago HS basketball news. $10 a month is a very small price to pay for access to 5 sites that you visit every day, not to mention that when people are paying they usually subconsciously feel like the content they are getting is “better” or “premium.” I’d estimate our community is made up of about 10,000 people who visit our sites anywhere from once a week to a few times a day (players, parents, fans, fans of particular high schools, fans of colleges recruiting the kids). As of now none of us has the leverage to ask people to pay for our content, but if we all teamed up we would certainly have the leverage. If only 20% of those 10,000 (generally very dedicated) fans bought our very-cheap-for-5-sites $10 a month subscription, that would mean we would EACH bring in about $50,000 a year (I hope I’m doing that math right. Even after writing this whole thing, I never even dreamed the number would be close to that high until 30 seconds ago when I did the math). That is absolutely astounding, because as I said before, without a system like this none of us has the leverage to charge a dime, and that supplemental income of 50k is far more than most of us make in a year as it is (we make our money from holding events such as tournaments and camps, selling premium info to college coaches, and advertising, or doing unrelated jobs). Even if we cut that number to $2 a month, which would feel like paying nothing if your credit card info is already in there, enabling 40% of that 10,000 person community to buy subscriptions (which could even be a low estimate, as it is a very devoted community), that would be about $20,000 a year for each of us, which could make all the difference in our lifestyles, and give us the funds to travel to more out of town tournaments to do our jobs even better (even if only 2% of our community subscribed at $10 a month, that would be a 5k that we could all really, really use, as what we do is very much so a labor of love). And the best part; if we do our jobs better and don’t have to spend time doing things that we don’t like to do and doesn’t help anyone just so we can pay the bills, which means more high school athletes can be covered (not just D1 recruits, but every potential college recruit, and even kids playing other sports). Not only does this help change young people’s lives (the best part of my job by far) by giving them exposure and helping colleges find them, but if we can cover more kids that means more friends of theirs and parents subscribing, and more money coming in to enable us to hire more and help even more kids. WOW, what a fricken gold mine. This is applicable to almost every niche out there, as it’s pretty clear that if you are involved in a community and really love something, a few dollars a month is very little for access to all of the sites you love, and to enable those content providers to do a much better job. Just take this concept and think about the things you like to read about and apply it. I know it would work for Henry Abbott’s True Hoop network and its hundreds of thousands of readers. Rivals and Scout have somewhat similar systems, where you pay around $10 a month for access to a network of college based recruiting websites, however most people only care about the recruits for their school or in their area, meaning they are only reading about 2% of the content they are paying for, whereas if you are paying for a package in your niche you are probably going to read at least half of the stuff you are paying for, meaning you get a lot more for less. In addition, there you could even pay a few more dollars each month for access to message boards, live chats with the people who run the sites, $1 for video content of full games, and other various levels of premium access, and it would all be a great value because it’s 5 different sites all with unique insight, and it would be easy as hell because your credit card information is already there and all you have to do is click a button. We could also use the auction system for packaging together and selling the premium subscriptions that we already sell to college coaches, and slots in AAU tournaments and player showcases, thus helping us make even more money off of the avenues of revenue we already rely on to pay the bills and making it more affordable for colleges to find recruits and for recruits to get noticed by participating in exposure events. This could change so many lives!

Finally and sadly, I think all of this is short lived anyways, because it is pretty clear to me that there will soon be a day when all content will be free. As long as people are charging something, other people can do the same thing and charge less and less, until eventually everything has to be free. The only way the content industry’s economy will be saved is if someone figures out a way to make money by advertising on the internet. In the meantime, I think the ideas I have summarized above (there is a lot more to it, but I didn’t want to lose reader interest and didn’t want to give away all my ideas ) could truly change millions of lives and reshape an entire industry.

Thank you so much for taking the time to read this, and please give me feedback.

Also, please don’t read this and steal my ideas without saying thank you. I could’ve kept it to myself and tried to make it happen on my own, but this has the potential to truly help so many individuals that I have no choice but to put it out there and hope that somebody makes this happen! That would do wonders for my Karma, which is what I’m all about as an altruistic individual. Like I said, all I want is a thank you or an executive producer credit, ala Steve Nash on Shaq vs. .

My email is DanielPoneman@gmail.com

Twitter @hsbball

Facebook Daniel Poneman

Youtube DanPon1

Site Illinoishsbasketball.com

Thanks again and now I’m off to work at 3:45!!!!

“Check out our site for some of the more popular applications and games available in Android Market. For a comprehensive, up-to-date list of the thousands of titles that are available, you will need to view Android Market on a handset.”

So the Android market grows to 50,000 apps. Am I going to search over my G1 from T-Mobile or HTC Hero from Sprint? (said conversely, could you imagine searching 50,000 items in the Amazon store ONLY over your mobile)? Amazon could also very easily distribute Apple AND Palm AND Blackberry versions – buy once, use over multiple devices.

Small number of apps, yes, but not big numbers. This article has even more value when you consider the app store distribution opp.

I am new to your post, Mark, but will not be a stranger.

thoughts on how the dynamics might play out?

The rationalization of free interships is immoral.

You also should mention that is is class discriminating. In most cases only rich kids can afford to take free internships, and gain yet another favor and advantage.

John