Musk Twitter Will Take Per Article Sales To The Next Level

In Why Publishers Don’t Sell Individual Articles, we saw how readers want à la carte (buy individual articles) but publishers offer only buffet (all-you-can-eat subscriptions). (While this post can be read independently, it will make more sense after reading the previous post.) Of late, some publishers are not even offering one-month subscriptions. Either their minimum … Read more

Seven Reasons Why Resellers Are Still Around In Today’s Digital Age

It might seem ironical that the IT industry, the torchbearer of digital transformation, uses reseller networks in today’s digital world instead of selling to its customers directly. As we saw in Are Resellers Required In Today’s Digital Age?, the basic tension in the direct-versus-reseller debate can be expressed as follows: Why can’t customers be allowed … Read more

Economic Times Publishes My Take On Play Store v. App Developers Controversy

Google Play Store provides the following services to Android app developers: Listing Discovery Distribution Commerce platform Training Google does not charge any fixed fees for these services. Like most companies in their early days, app developers are short of funds when they start out. While they have aspirations to build for the world, do marketing, … Read more

Why Publishers Don’t Sell Individual Articles

When it comes to per article sales, everybody points to ready demand, takes supply for granted, and focuses on the fulfilment, mainly micropayments. This has been going on for years during which many micropayments have come and gone, demand has skyrocketed as more and more media outlets have put their content behind paywalls, but per … Read more

Are Resellers Required In Today’s Digital Age?

You read about a product on Twitter or Product Hunt. You click through and visit the product’s website. You watch a 2-minute explainer video. You like what you see. You sign up for it. See something – like something – want something – buy something. That’s how people shop. – Martech When I started out … Read more

Six Step Plan For ONDC To Replicate The Success of UPI

Open Network for Digital Commerce seeks to increase the penetration of digital commerce in India by enabling companies to plug into its open and interoperable ecommerce protocol and thereby complete their ecommerce solutions. Setting up an e-commerce platform requires putting together diverse elements and working towards making each element a success. ONDC, on the other … Read more

ISO 20022: Waiting For Godot Moment

Limitation in field length of payment messages causes endless number of problems in electronic payments. Let me give a few examples: I was unable to fit the payee name MCS MERIDIAN CLIENT ACCOUNT HOUSE RENT 98 MERIDIAN PLACE JUN 2008 in the payee field of my bank’s payment screen. My bank told me to change … Read more

Shortselling For Normies

(This is a commentary on how shortselling works and not a guide to carry out shortselling.) I recently posted the following update on social media: @s_ketharaman: Startup Idea: Hindenburg Research of India. Conduct research in India. Launch hit jobs on foreign companies. 10% of large publicly traded firms in USA allegedly commit securities fraud, so … Read more

Revisiting Recurring Payments On The First Anniversary Of RBI Emandate

According to RBI Emandate: Every credit card and debit card based mandate for recurring payment and auto debit (“Standing Instruction”) will need to be re-initiated by the merchant in accordance with the new rules (henceforth “RegEM”), and processed by the issuer bank differently from before. RegEM, which came into effect from 1 October 2021, stipulated … Read more

Three Ways To Screw Up A Sales Incentive Policy

(This post is a slightly edited version of my answer to the above Quora question.) Legalese is the least of your problems when it comes to sales incentive policy. The crux of the issue is to crack the incentive structure. From personal experience, that’s a non trivial problem. Sales incentive policies always begin with good … Read more