Isn't the real problem a lack of good micro-payment systems? I think the vast majority of readers would be happy to pay 10 cents or 50 cents for an article, if it didn't take $20 of their time to do it (e.g., create account, login, enter credit card, etc.). Look at how many people happily paid for downloading music once it was made easy enough (i.e., via iTunes).
What ever happened to micro-payments, which once were the next big thing?
I've always thought the biggest problem with micropayments is the mental cost of deciding whether or not to purchase something. Decisions are painful, and deciding whether or not to spend $0.20 online isn't much less painful that deciding to spend $2.00 or $20.00 online. The pain of deciding whether or not to spend $0.20 far, far outweighs the value of the $0.20 to me. This suggests micropayments are an inefficient payment system.
Being asked whether or not I want to spend $0.25 or $0.50 twenty or fifty times a day is not an appealing prospect.
Micropayments suffers from a number of issues. If my monthly spend it $1 across 20 articles at 5 cents each then a single customer support query is likely to eat up months worth of margins for my account. Refunds are going to be just as hard. Operational costs are also generally quite high for processing payments across thousands of vendors across the Internet which requires not transaction processing, auditing, logging and so forth.
There are also practical issues such as building a common processing platform that can be used the same currency across competitors (Microsoft, NYTimes, Google News, etc), currency exchange rates, and so forth.
That said, if there were a pay-per-use model, I would happily use it without thinking twice about spending 5 cents on an article.
I always wondered if micropayments couldn't operate on a retroactive/guilt basis. e.g., you read articles as you would without a paywall and a cookie tracks your totals. At a certain point and every now and then thereafter, the site would tell you how many articles you've enjoyed freely, remind you of the professionals creating those articles and ask you to contribute based on your usage. Pay what you want, but suggest a typical value, etc.
Never got around to building a solution for it, but figured a startup could tackle this pretty easily with some code that clients could copy and paste to get started.
Even better from a user's perspective (although undoubtedly untenable revenue-wise) would be micro-payments after reading the article. I'd much rather pay for something after I have a chance to determine its value.
Perhaps showing a preview then a paywall to read the rest would work, but the vast majority of those I've seen use far too short a preview to really tell whether the article is worth reading.
The problem with micro-payments is that the customer is always reminded that they are paying for the service. The subscription-model will always be superior in this way.
Nobody likes nickel and dime stuff. I'm not paying a quarter to read a single article when I could subscribe to a whole year of the New Yorker for $15.
I really hope they improve the app as well. Great articles in print but app was almost unusable last year when I tried to do a digital only subscription.
What ever happened to advertising as a form of revenue?
In print publishing, all newspaper/magazine articles are typically space filler to direct your attention path to the accompanying ads.
With a decent sales staff and correct ad pricing there should be no reason to charge users to read an article online. Sure, printing costs are high, but repurposing content for online publication is cheaper by an order of magnitudes.
I've been in (newspaper/magazine) publishing over 30 years. I surfed through the waves of insanity when the internet started to become ubiquitous and publishers were pulling their hair out over fears that it would be the death of them. It's nothing more than an excuse for greed. It could have been handled properly by establishing ad revenue pricing structures early on, but it was easier for them to cry, complain and voluntarily remain ignorant of new tech while the owners of the publications bemoaned that their paper publication is not making enough money to stay afloat and keep their trophy wives in sport cars and designer jewelry at the same time.
I have no pity on these ignorant fools. If the New York Times goes bankrupt/offline it won't affect my life one bit. Other, more fiscally responsible individuals/organizations/bloggers will fill the niche and do it right.
First, are you actually saying charging people for something they consume directly instead of charging them indirectly through advertising[1] is greed? Does that mean my corner grocer is greedy for asking me to pay for my milk rather than slapping ads all over the carton?
Second, I'm amazed that you decry greed and in the same breadth promote advertising. I don't know whether to cry or laugh. Advertising is predominantly (some would say almost entirely) manipulative and dishonest.
[+] [-] hackuser|11 years ago|reply
What ever happened to micro-payments, which once were the next big thing?
[+] [-] gabemart|11 years ago|reply
Being asked whether or not I want to spend $0.25 or $0.50 twenty or fifty times a day is not an appealing prospect.
In short, don't make me think.
[+] [-] aleem|11 years ago|reply
There are also practical issues such as building a common processing platform that can be used the same currency across competitors (Microsoft, NYTimes, Google News, etc), currency exchange rates, and so forth.
That said, if there were a pay-per-use model, I would happily use it without thinking twice about spending 5 cents on an article.
[+] [-] prawn|11 years ago|reply
Never got around to building a solution for it, but figured a startup could tackle this pretty easily with some code that clients could copy and paste to get started.
[+] [-] tempestn|11 years ago|reply
Perhaps showing a preview then a paywall to read the rest would work, but the vast majority of those I've seen use far too short a preview to really tell whether the article is worth reading.
[+] [-] pgsandstrom|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] msellout|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Spooky23|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chuckcode|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] menubar|11 years ago|reply
In print publishing, all newspaper/magazine articles are typically space filler to direct your attention path to the accompanying ads.
With a decent sales staff and correct ad pricing there should be no reason to charge users to read an article online. Sure, printing costs are high, but repurposing content for online publication is cheaper by an order of magnitudes.
I've been in (newspaper/magazine) publishing over 30 years. I surfed through the waves of insanity when the internet started to become ubiquitous and publishers were pulling their hair out over fears that it would be the death of them. It's nothing more than an excuse for greed. It could have been handled properly by establishing ad revenue pricing structures early on, but it was easier for them to cry, complain and voluntarily remain ignorant of new tech while the owners of the publications bemoaned that their paper publication is not making enough money to stay afloat and keep their trophy wives in sport cars and designer jewelry at the same time.
I have no pity on these ignorant fools. If the New York Times goes bankrupt/offline it won't affect my life one bit. Other, more fiscally responsible individuals/organizations/bloggers will fill the niche and do it right.
[+] [-] eevilspock|11 years ago|reply
Second, I'm amazed that you decry greed and in the same breadth promote advertising. I don't know whether to cry or laugh. Advertising is predominantly (some would say almost entirely) manipulative and dishonest.
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[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7485773