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Ask HN: Please create a YouTube-red-style micropayments startup

1 points by rayalez 11y ago

As more people use adblockers and publishers are losing their ad income, it becomes obvious that there should exist an alternative monetization system. I believe that it will appear within the next several months, and it will be a huge and profitable startup. The biggest problem with micropayment systems is that a user has to make a conscious decision to pay every time he wants to read an article or watch a video. And the biggest problem with websites having payed subscriptions is that a person has have to manage multilple payed subscriptions, also usually subscribing to one website isn't worth it. I think, the solution is to create a universal yourube-red-syle micropayments system: Users can pay for a $10/month subscription, that gives them access to premium content on multiple websites. Then this money is shared between the websites the user is subscribed to, in proportion to the amount of time they spend on them. Some features it needs to have: - It should be possible to use this system to get access to the content behind the paywall, or just to the ad-free version of the website. Maybe there also needs to be a 3rd option, where money is shared between all the websites the person is visiting, as a donation. - It should be possible to share revenue between the platform and content creators, for example a platform like medium should be able to take 10-20% of revenue, and give the rest to the authors. - It should be convenient to join this network, and it should be easy to get access to the premium/ad-free version of the website, ideally in one click. What are your thoughts? What problems could this system face? Do you know anyone working on it?

rayalez 11y ago
One problem that I see with it: Publishers would not have control over pricing, any website will get the same proportion of money per visitor. If proportion of revenue depends on the time a person spends on the website then situation is better(people spend more time on sites with higher quality content, so such websites would get a higher percentage of revenue), but maybe there's a better solution. In any case, even with that problem, I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to join it, it's much better than not having a system at all. Maybe it is be possible to create some pricing tiers though?
tomgracey 11y ago
We are working on a similar system to the one you described here: https://www.coinetize.com https://www.coinetize.com - though we are going for individual payments for articles/photos/digital content rather than a subscription system. The site does enable payments to any linked website. I've heard the 'decision fatigue' argument but I don't see evidence that it would lead people to stop browsing and making payments. Also, how much of this is just getting people using a system? If you are charging 10 cents for an article, how much mental effort do people really use up making a decision whether or not to read? There's been a lot of conjecture over pay-for content over the past few years, much of which has already been proven wrong - e.g. it was speculated that people simply wouldn't be prepared to pay for content at all - and now we see many online editorials are monetized. In my view its simply perceptions that need to change - and because ads become ever more annoying and problematic, I think this is a change that's inevitable.

1 points by rayalez 11y ago

rayalez 11y ago

One problem that I see with it: Publishers would not have control over pricing, any website will get the same proportion of money per visitor. If proportion of revenue depends on the time a person spends on the website then situation is better(people spend more time on sites with higher quality content, so such websites would get a higher percentage of revenue), but maybe there's a better solution. In any case, even with that problem, I'm sure a lot of people would be happy to join it, it's much better than not having a system at all. Maybe it is be possible to create some pricing tiers though?

tomgracey 11y ago

We are working on a similar system to the one you described here: https://www.coinetize.com https://www.coinetize.com - though we are going for individual payments for articles/photos/digital content rather than a subscription system. The site does enable payments to any linked website. I've heard the 'decision fatigue' argument but I don't see evidence that it would lead people to stop browsing and making payments. Also, how much of this is just getting people using a system? If you are charging 10 cents for an article, how much mental effort do people really use up making a decision whether or not to read? There's been a lot of conjecture over pay-for content over the past few years, much of which has already been proven wrong - e.g. it was speculated that people simply wouldn't be prepared to pay for content at all - and now we see many online editorials are monetized. In my view its simply perceptions that need to change - and because ads become ever more annoying and problematic, I think this is a change that's inevitable.