I found a cool new online payment system – TrialPay – Pay for stuff by completing trials
I went to the Lavasoft website to update my really old version of adaware, the anti spyware program, and discovered that as well as having a free version of their software, they also had a new method of paying for the non-free version, which essentially means you can get the “pay for” version free too. The way it works is you elect to sign up for a free trial, or buy something else you need, via the TrialPay website, and then you get the “paid for” version of adaware for free. It sounds really cool, and great for people without much spare cash around.
Apparently quite a few big companies are using it, and theres an interesting article about the company in the New York Times, and also another one in the Wall Street Journal (pdf format) recently. The trialpay site has a case study of one of their merchants, Lavasoft, and according to that, Lavasoft are really pleased with the number of people using the system.
Some of the other companys using TrialPay already are: Blockbuster, Skype, Ebay, CNET, Photobucket, McAfee, Lavasoft, Winzip, AVG, Kaspersky, PC Magazine and im sure that list is going to grow huge. I mean who doesnt like getting stuff for free?
Quote from the TrialPay website:
“TrialPay is a payment method just like Visa, Mastercard, Paypal etc”
Theres more info on how the system works for shoppers on the TrialPay site, here
Im going to try out the system, as a way for my greasemonkey script users to make donations, without having to actually pay anything if they dont want to. Now thats what I call a win-win solution! 
If you are a developer and are thinking of using this payment method on your site, please consider signing up via my referral link, cheers!
* UPDATE* hmm ive just been informed by trialpay that you cant use it for receiving donations. I guess i might have to start charging for my scripts in that case, as not many people seem to bother to donate anyway.
