The founders of Armchair Travel, William Donelson and William Beckett, have begun charging an entrance fee to view two of their extensive sites, Taj Mahal and Kew Gardens.The history of pay-for-view content on the Internet has been abysmal, and many well-known magazines and daily newspapers have struggled with various methods of eliciting some revenue for their efforts, from subscription services to premium content, but the general consensus seems to be that folks will not pay for content that they have become used to receiving for free.
Micropayments, the low-value electronic financial transactions -- is another world. And using this model to grant access to VRs could be described as ballsy. The larger population is unfamiliar with VR technology and, besides, people are reluctant to get out their credit card info for a small charge.
But if any VR site is worthy of an entrance charge, the Taj Mahal and Kew Gardens sites by Armchair travel are, and they are ideal subjects for a case study of this payment model. Both sites offer 2 to 3 hours of touring and Donelson notes that visitors typically spend 1 to 2 hours at each site. “Many subscribers spend only 10-20 minutes on the first visit, then come back later to a more in-depth tour,” he says.
With accolades from the Daily Mail and the Sunday Telegraph, two big British newspapers, and from teachers and educational sites, among others, the Taj Mahal site would seem the ideal vehicle for testing out the micro-payments model. Armchair Travel charges US $3.00 for unlimited access to both sites but it appears there is a lower limit for charges. Furthermore, they offer access to school groups for a reasonable US $10.00 fee – for the entire school. “We do have around 2-4 schools per month signing on,” Donelson says. “We then see up to 100 visitors from each school over a 5 - 10 day period.”
How successful has this model been? Donelson generously shares some stats: “To date, we have had very disappointing results,” he laments. “In spite of numerous plaudits and awards, the site continues to show a very low rate of subscription. Typically, we have around 1,500 visitors per day to the Taj site, with an average of only one paying visitor per day. Interestingly, we have found that payments by credit card smaller than $2.00 elicit great suspicion from visitors, e.g. ‘are they Russian credit card thieves?’”
The company conducted numerous, extensive tests over the last two years, making changes (text versions of movies for the hearing impaired and school reports) and individually querying paying visitors. They also offer payment via credit card and the BT ‘Click & Buy’ system, although usage of the BT system is almost non-existent. British Telecom saw their work and invited them to participate in several of the programs. “We have enjoyed working with them, and have tried a number of approaches, but the overall benefit has been small.”
“We tried changing the price point from $1.00 to $5.00, and found that the best (if you can claim that) revenue price point for the Taj site alone was $2.00. Adding new features to the site did not change the subscription rate significantly,” he says. They also tested the number of free viewpoints and movies and found two provided them “with the, ‘so-to-speak’, highest number of subscriptions,” he notes with some discouragement. “Adding more free viewpoints reduced the number of paying visitors, as did reducing the number to one.”
Donelson says that the subscription rate is running at around one per day and recommends that other web-hopefuls get a sponsor: “For example, our new Explore St Paul's Cathedral website (soon to be online) was developed by us as a subset of our CD-ROM product under commission to St Paul’s itself. Other than St Paul’s, we have not had much luck in the sponsorship department either. Only Macromedia, God bless 'em, have given us a sponsorship via a reduced-price support contract. And we provide them with Flash download statistics of various sorts on a regular basis.”
They are now planning their ‘final assault’ for improved subscription rates; an integrate ‘Chat & Tour ™’ system, which allows visitors to chat with each other as they tour the sites, and should be implemented shortly. (VRWAY implemented a similar system when they first launched in early 2000, with lackluster results.)
Armchair Travel offers a CD-ROM version of the Explore Kew Gardens website, selling few online but with better success in the physical Kew shops.
I asked Donelson about the future of the micropayments model, given his experience. “If by develop, you mean die, I think there is a good chance,” he laughs. “Actually, it is very hard to tell. Right now, there is extraordinary resistance online to paying for anything. People say, ‘I pay the phone company because I have to; everybody else - get lost’.”
Other Reading :
Clay Shirky, in ‘The Case Against Micropayments’ cites a long list of floundering or failed systems.
In an interview for paidContent, ‘Evangelizing for the Small Guy’, Guy Kawasaki, Silicon Valley VC and ex-Apple employee, discusses his recently launched BitPass.
Related Articles:
An Interview with Armchair Travel.
Armchair Travel's Taj Mahal virtual tour project.
Erik Goetze, of www.virtualparks.org, is now using BitPass for access to new content on his site. Learn more about his experience here.
