Pencio
I have been developing a new Internet service for the past month or two, called Pencio, but I'm stopping work on it. Why? No customers. I've gotten no response from potential customers I've contacted about it. Not negative responses, no responses. Guess I can take a hint. Anyways, I'll post it up here for the entertainment of the one guy who reads this.
During the first phase of the Internet, the rush was to get customers. Free services were it. Look at me. ONElist was a free, ad supported service. The emphasis was on getting more customers, not revenue. That would take care of itself through ads. But of course that is all changing. The ad market tanked. The countless free ad-supported sites are now scrambling for their lives. That's where Pencio comes in.
Sites don't have many options when it comes to revenue. Forget ads. That leaves asking for donations or charging subscriptions. Donations are an OK one time way to make money. But if you need recurring revenue, subscriptions are where it's at. The problem is that, to charge subscriptions, a site needs to program its own subscription system. This isn't trivial. Also, a site needs to accept transactions, usually by credit card.
At its most basic level, Pencio is a system to process and manage subscriptions. A web site defines a set of subscriptions and Pencio takes care of the rest. Once a user subscribes, Pencio even controls access to the web site. Pencio takes a cut of the subscription fee and the web site sits back and receives checks every month.
With a centralized subscription system, you get additional benefits. Several web sites can get together and define "network subscriptions," where one subscription grants access to multiple sites. Also, Pencio has the capability to allow subscriptions of very small amounts. Because of credit card transaction fees, it is generally not economically viable to accept charges of less than $5 US or so. But Pencio allows small transactions.
Anyways, I think Pencio is a good idea. I wouldn't have spent any time on it otherwise. Unfortunately, it appears that the market isn't ready to accept the new reality of subscription based web sites yet.
Posted by markf at October 4, 2001 10:15 PM