BitPass works (Score 2, Insightful)

I've been using BitPass to sell a number of things:

1. My feature film, "Nothing So Strange."
2. Open-source clips from that film.
3. Songs from "Bat Boy: The Musical."
4. My play, "Fair & Balanced."

With regard to some questions and comments here about BitPass:

--Ease of use. I didn't install the gateway, but I do most of the listing and configuring the pages to work with BitPass myself. I'm not much of a techie at all (which is why my hands are trembling slightly as I post on Slashdot) and I found the process easy from the start. The previous poster is right that the gateway installation complexity puts BitPass selling out of the hands of those who can't control what their host does, but I know that BitPass has specific plans to make becoming a BitPass seller much easier.

--Refunds. Getting a refund is actually quite easy. In the first days, some people had trouble downloading "Nothing So Strange." All they had to do was register a complaint at BitPass.com, then we read their note and either solved the problem or issued a refund. Often, this whole process was completed within minutes. (And we've fixed the majority of downloading problems now.)

--Are people willing to pay? God, yes. We've been dying to make "Nothing So Strange" (a faux documentary about the assassination of Bill Gates) available to all of the people who write in and ask how they can see it. So far, it has only been at festivals, so if you didn't live where it played a festival it was impossible to see. The demand we knew was there did translate into sales. Now, with any luck, we can use the proceeds from the online venture to finance a DVD run and make it available that way, too. Additionally, the most popular "Bat Boy" song download is the one recording that is available nowhere else--an early version of a song that is currently on the album in stores. To "Bat Boy" fanatics, an exclusive like this is pretty special. I agree with the poster who said that people won't pay for stuff they can get for free elsewhere on the Web. The trick is to have stuff that isn't anywhere else. Nothing I've put up on the Web with BitPass is something I would have put up for free--the bandwidth costs alone would have made that impossible.

--PayPal competition. As far as I know, PayPal doesn't offer secure access to online content. That's the key advantage of BitPass.

--High buy-in. It's true that to buy something for 25 cents you need to spend at least $3 if you are not currently holding a BitPass card, and that is a disadvantage. But as more and more content gets up on the Web using BitPass, I think this will be less of an issue. And the items that are already priced at $3 or $5 (like, oh, say, my play or "Nothing So Strange") will help put a BitPass card in people's hands without their risking anything.

--BitPass fees. To paraphrase another poster, you can see it as a 15% fee or an 85% royalty. I have no problems with their terms. For what they do, it's worth it.