A lot of people have a problem with paying for software or services – it seems that intangible goods are just hard for many people to feel comfortable opening up their wallet for. Worse still is when the software or service is low cost, for example a utility such as WinZip – then the resistance is even greater.

So, what’s a vendor in this position to do? Well, if you go to the WinZip Web site and click on the Download link you’ll see another link titled “Fully Licensed WinZip Free”. This page showcases a clever and novel solution to the software publisher’s problem using a system called TrialPay.

TrialPay requires vendors (our software publisher in this case) to set a minimum price that they are willing to accept for their product or service. Now TrialPay has a collection of some 500 merchants who will pay TrialPay a finder’s fee for a qualified customer and TrialPay, in turn, will pay the vendor an amount greater or equal to the vendor’s required price for each user that signs up for a TrialPay merchant offering. As the vendor now has been compensated the product or service is provided to the user for free!

The logic works like this: Consider a merchant such as Stamps.com; acquiring a customer might have a value to the company of $50 or more. So TrialPay negotiates a price per qualified customer they deliver to Stamps.com and whenever a customer signs up, the vendor gets paid even if TrialPay has to wait for the merchant to pay. TrialPay basically has to manage their risk in fronting money to the vendors before TrialPay is paid by the merchants.

Some of the merchant offers, such as Stamps.com, provide the vendor product or service to the user instantly on signing up while other, such as American Express BlueCash Card have a waiting period (three days in the case of the Amex card) before the user is rewarded.

Another aspect of TrialPay is that the offers presented on any given vendor site are tailored – according to TrialPay – to a greater or lesser degree on the characteristics of the visiting users. For example, users on the WinZip site probably wouldn’t be offered merchants in the crafts market.

Now remember that I wrote that TrialPay compensates vendors by an amount equal or greater than the vendor’s minimum price. This is a clever deal as it essentially rewards vendors according to the quality of the customers they deliver, which in turn encourages them to be smart about what products or services they apply TrialPay to and how they present their TrialPay offers.

Mark Gibbs is a consultant, author, journalist, columnist and blogger.