Comments on: Comments on 8277

Post number 8277

BT — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 13:13:21 -0800

Matt H. and MeFi in New York Times (may require free subscription to access) -- an Andy Wang piece about using the Amazon Honor System to keep websites like his afloat. What I want to know: why does Matt wants to hurl that laptop into the bay?

By: Big Fat Tycoon

Big Fat Tycoon — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 13:37:21 -0800

See here.

By: BT

BT — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 13:40:10 -0800

whoops. my bad. Searched mefi and didn't even think about metatalk.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 15:31:54 -0800

(We'll be fixing that. Ha!)

By: o2b

o2b — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 17:13:51 -0800

i dont read metatalk. thank you BT.

By: isildur

isildur — Wed, 13 Jun 2001 21:21:53 -0800

I concur.

By: dhartung

dhartung — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 00:55:42 -0800

(See, Matt? Crossposting ...)

By: insomnia_lj

insomnia_lj — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 05:11:48 -0800

Um... why the Amazon Honor System? You can do the same thing with Paypal and save a bunch on the commissions, if I am not mistaken...

By: tallman

tallman — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 05:45:14 -0800

Amazon does have a slightly larger user base, thus making it easier for people to donate....

By: crunchland

crunchland — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 07:02:46 -0800

While regular professional credit card transaction fees hover around 2 or 3 percent, Amazon pulls a whopping 15% right off the top of every donation, plus a .15 per transaction fee. It's really not worth it.

By: kindall

kindall — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 08:06:54 -0800

Amazon's name and the ease of use of their system, however, may cause people to contribute enough more to make up for that 15%. It's like with credit cards. When they were first introduced, merchants were reluctant to give the bank even a 2% cut of every transaction. "People will buy more when it's easier, and credit cards make it easier," said the banks. And they were right. Today, of course, a store pretty much has to take credit cards -- even Sears, who resisted taking Mastercard and Visa for many years (even to the extent of launching "the other white meat," Discover) succumbed, and Hill's, a discount department store chain that actually used the line "No credit cards! Use layaway instead!" in their advertising, went out of business. If Amazon lets you come out money ahead, if it gets a few contributors who otherwise wouldn't have donated, then it may well justify the extra cost, just as a literary agent can justify his 15% fee by getting you a better deal with a publisher than you'd negotiate on your own.

By: markkraft

markkraft — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 10:51:51 -0800

I'm not sure that Amazon really does have more users than paypal, though. Paypal is still the standard for online auctioning, for instance, and it is really quite easy to use. It's also a global payment method, which is a good thing. It would be nice to have stats on all this, though. I half expect Jacob Nielsen to pull something out of his hat...

By: web-goddess

web-goddess — Thu, 14 Jun 2001 11:19:49 -0800

From the article: Of course, there is a much larger base of potential online philanthropists at Amazon, which has about 32 million registered users, compared with about seven million at PayPal. No Jakob necessary (though he did discuss it back in February)... :)