Darin and others, many thanks for your kind words.
40% is scary I know - but you can't compare like for like with credit card payment processors.
The first 20% or so is transaction fees for the topup payment, including the holdback percentage, because we can't fund payments we haven't received.
The next 10% covers our server costs, bandwidth on the security messages, development costs, chargeback costs, operating costs and profit.
The next 10% is a referral payment that goes to the webmaster that introduced that surfer. So if a TGP site introduced the surfer, that TGP site will get 10% of the total spend for that surfer up to a max commission of $10. This gives a massive incentive to TGP owners and other high traffic sites to promote the scheme. Demo3 at
www.surfingsuggestions.com shows how quickly a TGP owner could add a PayAsYouClick section without losing existing traffic, and virtually force that surfer to get a free account under his ref code.
The next 10% is a referral payment that goes to the webmaster that introduced the webmaster - GFY style sig signups. He gets 10% of everything the webmaster earns, up to a max commission of $100 (so the webmaster selling the content has earned $1000 gross). Then this percentage stop, allowing us to drop from 50% down to 40%.
There is no minimum charge even down to a click costing 0.1 cents. If you processed a card payment of 50 cents say (if anybody allowed you to), you would have something like a 20 cent transaction fee plus say 15% - total cost about 27 cents. So you'd be paying about 50% at this level when you take the transaction fee into account - if you could get someone to process.
PayAsYouClick isn't trying to compete with card processors. Actually the card processors are very excited about what we're doing, and very happy to be processing the topup payments for us.
Where we are aiming is for charging really small amounts for indivudual pics, rather than subscription level payments.
The surfer will be attracted to PAYC if he sees a high volume of sites that use it at a level that isn't a barrier for him.
He doesn't trust adult sites with his card number, or even his email, and he doesn't trust them to deliver a site full of content worth $30. But if he sees a thumbnail of a 5 minute video priced at 10 cents - or a gallery full of niche pics priced at 2 cents each, he doesn't have to trust anyone. He can see what he's buying. He'll click each of your pics, and each of your vids, paying those little prices on each click.
That way a much higher proportion of you surfers will spend a little, rather than playing the numbers game to get a few that pay a lot.
And don't forget, this surfer has preloaded his account, he's logged into his toolbar, and hot to trot. When he sees your site, all he has to do is click and say yes, and you've got your money. He doesn't have to pull his pants up to find the credit card, so conversions are MUCH higher.
You'll still be upselling your subscriptions at the same time, and as Darin points out you can convert an existing paysite to give a ten-minute trial in less than an hour first time - 15 minutes after that.
But the real strength lies in the ability to charge tiny amounts at really high volume. In order to achieve that volume of surfers, we need the help of the high-traffic sites - the TGPs and link lists. That's why there are the high referral bonuses, and that's why the bottom line is 40/50 percent. If you like, think of 20% as the card fee, 20% as a traffic fee, and 10% for those bastards at PayAsYouClick.
Its a new system - give me feedback on this.