Back to Postage Due marketing

Matthew James Marnell wrote

<i>>:Because of this, many providers have proposed a structure that was</i>
<i>>:greatly feared until not too recently and could be the death knell</i>
<i>>:of the Internet.</i>
<i>>:</i>
<i>>:*Charge For Traffic*</i>

and Stephanie Kidder <skidder@iway.fr> wrote

<i>>I work for a service provider in France and I've been looking into the</i>
<i>>possibility of such payment structures. I think it would make it easier</i>
<i>>for the small business to put up a web server. At least at the beginning...</i>
<i>>Does anyone know of providers using such a system? Are they pleased</i>
<i>>with how its working? It seems to be a logical step. Especially in France</i>
<i>>where Internet costs are still very high. It's very difficult for a small</i>
<i>>business to start a web based service here. What do you think?</i>

Traffic here in New Zealand has always been charged for and to date it has
worked . A year or so ago costs where quite high, but now with more ISP's
entering the market prices have started to come down. As a guideline the
going rate is about $10usd per month for 20 megs, or $0.25usd per meg for
national traffic, $1.00+ per meg for international traffic, depends on your
usage, the payment plan you prefer, etc.

The uptake of the inet here in NZ apparently is only second to the USA,
charging for volume doesn't seem to have slowed people wanting to use the
inet. It has to be said however that many of the volume charging modelsare
trying to be as flat as possible, you'll get charged $X for y megs per
month. Initially this wasn't the case, it seems that users like the notion
of a reasonably fixed charge per month instead of a fright at the end of the
month when the bill comes in the post.

To look at it from the other end, ie businesses, the volume charging regime
is both good and bad.

- you pay for what you use, no more no less, this is fine for connection and
traffic costs you generate. The downside here is though that cost of usage
is not fixed and will take sometime to budget for accurately.

- the bad side of the equation is when you want to look at est. a web site,
volume based charging means that for every hit on your page you get to pay
for the pleasure, this results in the paradoxical situation of a popular
site putting you out of business. The only way NZ businesses can get around
this is by mirroring their sites in the USA and negotiating a flatter charge
for volume generated by web sites.

Personally, I think volume charging is not the way to go purely because of
the unknown cost factor it generates for business.

richard ram

e m a i l : r i c h a r d @ i c o n z . c o . n z
w e b : h t t p : / / i c o n z . c o . n z / ~ r i c h a r d /
l o c a l e : a u c k l a n d , n e w z e a l a n d

----
This week's sponsor:
Marketing to Women Online Conference &amp;lt;&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.kelseygroup.com/kelsey">http://www.kelseygroup.com/kelsey</a>"&gt;http://www.kelseygroup.com/kelsey&lt;/a&gt;&amp;gt;

Talk with Dave Taylor, Tuesday, Oct. 17, at 6 pm Pacific/9 pm Eastern
over the Internet using GlobalStage/GlobalChat software. See
&amp;lt;&lt;a href="<a href="http://www.popco.com/hyper/internet-marketing/chat.html">http://www.popco.com/hyper/internet-marketing/chat.html</a>"&gt;http://www.popco.com/hyper/internet-marketing/chat.html&lt;/a&gt;&amp;gt; for details

• Messages sorted by: [ date ][ thread ][ subject ][ author ]
• Next message: jadietsch@activmedia.com: "Our second survey of Net marketers..."
• Previous message: karl@ksme.net: "An Internet Marketing Excercise &amp;amp; Case Study"

Return to Internet Marketing Home Page

Post a message to this group by filling in the form below.