Lore "Brunching Shuttlecocks" Sjoberg has posted a freaking brilliant, bullshit-free rant about micropayments, charging for access to sites, and so forth:
ChargingPeople is far from the Web standard, even though it solves every single economic issue on the Web today, and several of the aesthetic ones. You make money instead of losing money. You make more money the more readers you have. You don't have to use invasive advertising or promote products you may not personally endorse. The only downside is that your readership shrinks to a fraction of its former glory.
ChargingPeople is especially suited to the independent Web artists out there. First off, only an employee-free operation can hope to make enough money from ChargingPeople to turn a profit right now. Secondly, the independent Web artists are the same ones who are going to write and draw stuff anyway. They've been making comics or writing stories since they were in grade school and they're not going to stop just because they're in QA now. So as long as you're making it, you may as well get what you can out of it.
(Thanks, eegba!)
