Behavior economics suggests that you&#x27;re wrong[1]. Users do not like metered useage even when it benefits them. An anecdotal illustration of this at work:<p>&gt; What was the biggest complaint of AOL users? Not the widely mocked and irritating blue bar that appeared when members downloaded information. Not the frequent unsolicited junk e-mail. Not dropped connections. Their overwhelming gripe: the ticking clock. Users didn’t want to pay by the hour anymore. ... Case had heard from one AOL member who insisted that she was being cheated by AOL’s hourly rate pricing. When he checked her average monthly usage, he found that she would be paying AOL more under the flat-rate price of $19.95. When Case informed the user of that fact, her reaction was immediate. ‘I don’t care,’ she told an incredulous Case. ’I am being cheated by you.’<p>The transactional friction between &quot;free&quot; and &quot;not free&quot; is high, even for very small values of &quot;not free.&quot; This has been backed up by experiments[2]:<p>&gt; In his book Predictably Irrational, Ariely describes a series of simple experiments that offered subjects something desirable – chocolate – at a variety of prices. Two types of chocolate were used – a Hershey’s kiss and a Lindt chocolate truffle. While the kiss is an inexpensive and common treat, a Lindt truffle is a far more tasty confection that costs an order of magnitude more than the kiss.<p>&gt; The first experiment offered subjects a truffle for 15 cents (about half its actual cost) or a kiss for 1 cent. Nearly three out of four subjects chose the truffle, which seems logical enough based on the relative value of the offers.<p>&gt; The next experiment reduced the price of each product by one cent – the truffle was offered at 14 cents, and the kiss was free. Although the price differential remained the same, the behavior of the subjects changed dramatically: more than two thirds of the subjects chose the free chocolate kiss over the bargain-priced truffle.<p>It&#x27;s not about getting the right micropayment system, it&#x27;s about overcoming something about how humans understand and deal with price signals. You can either sit around trying to rewire people or you can come up with a business model designed for people. Micropayments as a business model for web content is wishcasting.<p>1) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dtc.umn.edu&#x2F;~odlyzko&#x2F;doc&#x2F;case.against.micropayments.pdf" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.dtc.umn.edu&#x2F;~odlyzko&#x2F;doc&#x2F;case.against.micropaymen...</a>
2) <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.neurosciencemarketing.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-power-of-free.htm" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.neurosciencemarketing.com&#x2F;blog&#x2F;articles&#x2F;the-power...</a>