4 ms·

I can't find the subscription costs. How did you manage to get the papers to sign? I've been expecting for a service like yours for some time, but here in Spai

by omegant 11y ago

I can't find the subscription costs. How did you manage to get the papers to sign? I've been expecting for a service like yours for some time, but here in Spain the news papers are too dumb to try something like this (unless all the other big ones have done it first) you only have to look at the Google law, they are desperate and lost.

JeanMertz 11y ago
There are no subscriptions. You sign up, and only pay for what you read. Articles cost €0,30 on average, with smaller news-type articles being cheaper than longreads (interviews, opinion pieces, backstory articles). On signup you get €2,50 for free, and then another €2,50 when you topup your wallet the first time. Regarding signing up the publishers. This took a long time in The Netherlands, but getting an investment from The New York Times and Axel Springer certainly helped speed up the German launch.
- eevilspock 11y ago
  I hope your model works as an antidote to the perverse incentives of ad-based revenue, but I wonder if you could improve the incentives even more. There will still be advantages to using click-bait and writing that manipulates our curiosity. If you make it trivial to get a refund, that will greatly negate those incentives, but it also enables freeloaders, no? Jean, I would love to hear your or Blendle's thoughs on my variation of a reader payment scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008960
  - JeanMertz 11y ago
    In fact, refunds have proven to be a great way to combat click-bait links. The example we've given before is gossip magazines, which thrive on click-bait (purchase-bait?) titles on their front covers. In Blendle, we see a high refund rate on these types of magazine articles, when the title suggests something else than the article presents to the reader. Freeloaders have turned out to be only a minor issue, whom we are willing to live with, if it means we have a great user experience for 99% of the other people using Blendle in good faith. We're of course thinking of ways to tackle this as well, but never at the cost of user experience. RE: 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. I agree, this is indeed something we work to improve every day. The two biggest features to combat this are refunds and low-friction purchases. The latter we implement by not requiring any action except for clicking on the text you want to read.
- emir_ 11y ago
  30 cents per article?

by omegant 11y ago

JeanMertz 11y ago

There are no subscriptions. You sign up, and only pay for what you read. Articles cost €0,30 on average, with smaller news-type articles being cheaper than longreads (interviews, opinion pieces, backstory articles). On signup you get €2,50 for free, and then another €2,50 when you topup your wallet the first time. Regarding signing up the publishers. This took a long time in The Netherlands, but getting an investment from The New York Times and Axel Springer certainly helped speed up the German launch.

eevilspock 11y ago
I hope your model works as an antidote to the perverse incentives of ad-based revenue, but I wonder if you could improve the incentives even more. There will still be advantages to using click-bait and writing that manipulates our curiosity. If you make it trivial to get a refund, that will greatly negate those incentives, but it also enables freeloaders, no? Jean, I would love to hear your or Blendle's thoughs on my variation of a reader payment scheme: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008960 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8008960
- JeanMertz 11y ago
  In fact, refunds have proven to be a great way to combat click-bait links. The example we've given before is gossip magazines, which thrive on click-bait (purchase-bait?) titles on their front covers. In Blendle, we see a high refund rate on these types of magazine articles, when the title suggests something else than the article presents to the reader. Freeloaders have turned out to be only a minor issue, whom we are willing to live with, if it means we have a great user experience for 99% of the other people using Blendle in good faith. We're of course thinking of ways to tackle this as well, but never at the cost of user experience. RE: 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. I agree, this is indeed something we work to improve every day. The two biggest features to combat this are refunds and low-friction purchases. The latter we implement by not requiring any action except for clicking on the text you want to read.
emir_ 11y ago
30 cents per article?