Problem: DW needs to make money to run! And we want to have more than just paid accounts to make people want to give us money. Small impulse purchases are especially awesome, but small money amounts are disproportionately eaten by fees. So, for instance, if we sell $1 v- gifts? We only get 67 cents if someone buys just one, because there is a 2.7% + 30 cent fee for the transaction. That is sad and a waste.
Possible solution: We implement a (nonrefundable) points system. It's a lot more flexible than the gift certificate system. Points are bought in bulk, but can be used on tiny purchases that would otherwise be awkward to offer for payment. Additionally, points purchases could probably go down to as low as $5 if they are scaled down so there are less points proportionally at $5 than at bigger numbers like $20, encouraging people to get small amounts as impulse purchase without financially punishing us as much for the transaction fee for the smaller amount because the amount they're worth in the system is keyed to the money we get from the higher amount of money, where the fees are less usurious. (That is a horrible run on sentence.) These points would be perfect for applying to things like v-gifts, generating journal PDFs, mass editing securities, or renaming a journal. You could get paid journal time for them. These points could be transferrable--you could donate points to other users in any amount, enabling a micropayment system between users. Community users could donate towards having their community get a paid account, for instance. (Hopefully paid communities will get more extra community oriented perks -- see http://dreamwidth.cometheapocalypse.com/notes/Possible_paid_community_features for ideas). Communities could run contests and pay out in points. It helps spur a gift economy between users--they may not want to drop $10 or $20 on another person for a paid account, but they might be willing to drop 50 cents or $1 worth of points easily. So: good idea, bad idea, unrealistic? --foxfirefey _______________________________________________ dw-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.dwscoalition.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dw-discuss
