I think it was Hank Williams (blog: "Why Does Everything Suck") that pointed out that advertisers can not afford to buy ads on sites using this kind of model. The customers that micro-pay out of seeing the ads are exactly the small minority that the advertisers were hoping to hit in their blanket campaign. So the remaining traffic is worthless to advertisers- so better just to run it as a pure subscription site (which also has not worked well).

Its a great idea, but I'm not sure its feasible.

To subscribe, browsers have to go out of their way (interrupt their normal browsing experience) and join in. There's a better user experience by simple installing AdBlockPlus. And if you ARE willing to go out of your way, just use TipJoy or a similar service to donate to the site - PayPal would be better, actually, given the number of people who already have PayPal accounts.

The parallel is with music, I'd think: You're looking to launch a subscription service when most people will just download the content for free or buy what they want to support off of iTunes. Only, your case is even worse: Napster/Rhapsody are doing moderately well with subscription models, and to get the rights to those subscription models, they have deals in place with the 4 major labels. The blogging (even the A-list blogging) community is much less consolidated - you'd have to strike an incredible amount of agreements to make your service universal.

But you're thinking in the right direction.

Actually, how about this:

Integrate with AdBlockPlus. If you pay, there are no ads ANYWHERE. Then, collect donations for EVERYONE. As a blogger, I don't need to have signed up to you, the money is being collected just the same.

Then, begin contacting bloggers and letting them know that they have X in an account with you, and they'd probably want to collect it. That would work. That would work and it would be best done by the AdBlockPlus people.

Edit: AdBlockPlus is (from what I gather on their website) OpenSource and currently lacking a business model. You could probably start working from there on, like AdBlockPlus, Good Samaritan Edition or something

Idea would probably need to be sold to paypal, or even a credit card company, maybe integrated by google, firefox, or IE to gain mainstream use.

Incentives like "tip over $20/month and enjoy an add-free web experience" for a browser add-on.

People are too lazy to add money to an account in order to tip.

If I were you, I will never work on ideas that involves transactions of money. It really involves too much security problems. But, I am not discouraging you. Your idea is cool. And, I could see the future of it if everyone is using it. And, I really believe that many people prefer ad-free internet. But, I am not sure that whether people will pay for an ad-free internet or not.

Maybe you could market it in a way targeted to anti-consumerists ?

You would probably want a directory or search engine which covered the people who had signed up. You could promote it as an "ad-free search engine" to bring traffic to your customers.

the problem with micropayments is that you need to invest a ton of money into making your average person use it casually.