3 ms·

The content on a comment page is each individual comment. Why would I come back to reply to a comment more than once? As for newspapers: today's Sydney Mornig

The content on a comment page is each individual comment. Why would I come back to reply to a comment more than once? As for newspapers: today's Sydney Mornig Herald is a few dozen pages, with multiple articles per page. Let's call that 100 articles (current affairs, technology, finance, sports). It costs about a dollar per day. So each article is worth about a cent, for a paper newspaper delivered to your house. The same articles on the web at 1/3 of a cent each read doesn't sound beyond the realms of realistic pricing for a sustainable distribution. Of course I would prefer to spend my money on a non-Murdoch paper. But that gets into politics rather than economics.

JacobJans 11y ago
> As for newspapers: today's Sydney Mornig Herald is a few dozen pages, with multiple articles per page. Let's call that 100 articles (current affairs, technology, finance, sports). It costs about a dollar per day. So each article is worth about a cent, for a paper newspaper delivered to your house. > The same articles on the web at 1/3 of a cent each read doesn't sound beyond the realms of realistic pricing for a sustainable distribution. That demonstrates perfectly how the micropayment model is fundamentally different than the subscription model. The assumption with micropayments is that you're paying only for what you view – not for everything the website produces. With a subscription, you're paying for everything, whether or not your read it. Say you 10 read articles in the paper each day. That works out to $0.10 an article, not $.01 an article, if you're being charged just for what you read. A huge difference. $0.10 would possibly be sustainable for micropayments, especially if you guaranteed the publisher a minimum payment each month. 1/3rd of a cent is simply out of the realm of reality – unless you're agreeing to pay, in advance, for all of the articles they produce. In which case, I don't think you're talking about micropayments anymore.
- manicdee 11y ago
  The newspaper still paid for those articles to be written even if I didn't read them. Thus $0.01/article is still a fair pricing.

JacobJans 11y ago

> As for newspapers: today's Sydney Mornig Herald is a few dozen pages, with multiple articles per page. Let's call that 100 articles (current affairs, technology, finance, sports). It costs about a dollar per day. So each article is worth about a cent, for a paper newspaper delivered to your house. > The same articles on the web at 1/3 of a cent each read doesn't sound beyond the realms of realistic pricing for a sustainable distribution. That demonstrates perfectly how the micropayment model is fundamentally different than the subscription model. The assumption with micropayments is that you're paying only for what you view – not for everything the website produces. With a subscription, you're paying for everything, whether or not your read it. Say you 10 read articles in the paper each day. That works out to $0.10 an article, not $.01 an article, if you're being charged just for what you read. A huge difference. $0.10 would possibly be sustainable for micropayments, especially if you guaranteed the publisher a minimum payment each month. 1/3rd of a cent is simply out of the realm of reality – unless you're agreeing to pay, in advance, for all of the articles they produce. In which case, I don't think you're talking about micropayments anymore.

manicdee 11y ago
The newspaper still paid for those articles to be written even if I didn't read them. Thus $0.01/article is still a fair pricing.