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I'd urge you to medidate on what the constant complaints about paywalls imply about the public's appetite for non-advertising revenue streams. Journalists have
by superuser2 11y ago
I'd urge you to medidate on what the constant complaints about paywalls imply about the public's appetite for non-advertising revenue streams.
Journalists have to eat.
- cstross 11y agoBTDT (I wrote a monthly magazine column for more than half a decade; I write for a living). There are other ways to earn a crust with the pen than through advertising. The real headache with paywalls is that buying access is a pain in the arse, with price structures that make no sense from the casual browser's point of view. What we really need is a robust microbilling architecture ... but back when the web began to take its shape in 1994-96 the transaction cost was prohibitive for micro-billing (V.34bis modems rather than broadband put a floor under minimum TCP/IP connection costs that exceeded the sort of transaction size expected for micro-billing).
- colmvp 11y agoOne of the journalists I follow in Canada has a Patreon and doesn't inundate his work with ads or paywall. I voluntarily pay him more money per month than any news site because he actually produces work that matters to me (politics, journalism) and doesn't reduce the user experience.
- sangnoir 11y agoIt's a good setup, but I doubt it can scale.