Commercializing Skinning

I’ve been thinking about this for a few days now, and I thought I’d share my thoughts with you.

 You can already see that Wincustomize sells commercial skins for $15US or whatever.

 How about thinking of a system where ordinary skinners can earn a token amount for their work…

The basic gist of my idea is that:

A) to download a skin, any skin, would cost 1 credit.

(lets ignore variations for now, obviously a complete windows theme would be worth more then an icon)

People can convert dollars into credits in $5 lots, and credits into dollars in $20 lots.

C) You can only 'sell' skins  if you are a Wincustomize subscriber

1 Credit = 1 Download,

1 Credit = 1 Cent ($0.1)

There are 3 main reasons why people don't like to pay for things on the internet.

Problem                       

1) The hassle of transferring money, even small amounts

2) The price, who wants to spend money

3) The variety, why pay when you can probably get something similar for free.

Solution

1) Make it automatic, or a 1 click process,

you click "Download" and X credits will be automatically transferred to the skinners account.

2) Make it so cheap that no one would begrudge paying

3) It would be easier to pay the tiny amount, then trying to find an alternative

This system would be spread across different levels, much the same why it is now:

Visitor: Can download free skins

Registered Member: Can download credited skins, and upload free skins

Subscriber: Can download credited skins, and upload credited skins.

The reason for having to be a subscriber to upload credited skins would be so that Wincustomize benefited from the minor hassle that implementing this system would create. I would guarantee that they'd have  99% of skin designers becoming subscribers in order to enjoy the benefits of such a system.

Anyway, I just thought I'd share my ideas with you. I know that $0.1 per download is barely worth it, but it would mean that the skins were taken more seriously, it would mean that it would be something you could put down as job experience, it would mean that more people would be able to justify being subscribers and it would  mean that more people would bring their creative talent to the skinning world.

I know that I've often wished I could quickly and easily make a small donation to creators of skins and software. Alone its not much, but it adds up

Thankyou for reading.