New website monetization service Contenture has officially gone live today. We’ve covered it before, but it’s always good to say it again: Contenture is an anti-ad service that provides website owners and users the option of actual payments instead of seeing ugly advertisements all over the place.
Contenture does not allow users to pick the websites they pay, but rather distributes each user’s payment for how much he has visited a site on the Contenture network. If a user visits BoingBoing fifty times and Gizmodo thirty times, BoingBoing will get more of the monthly $6 fee. This $6 fee will not increase even as the user visits more sites.
Website owners are also given the option to implement features on their websites for Contenture subscribers. For example, websites could allow Contenture subscribers to see stories before they go live to those who are not paying. This is a feature that Slashdot allots already to their subscribers. The benefit of implementing premium features through Contenture would be the ease for users: you make one payment that gets distributed, rather than paying each site which has a paid model.
While there do not seem to be any launch partners for Contenture, it will be interesting to see if the subscription model picks up steam over the coming months.
Disclosure: Contenture was co-founded by Techgeist author Alex Wilhelm.
