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> I want high quality content, and I'm willing to pay for it. Now if only the other billions of people on this planet felt the same way. That's why I don't li

> I want high quality content, and I'm willing to pay for it. Now if only the other billions of people on this planet felt the same way. That's why I don't like this sentence. Every time the topic of ads come up here or on reddit, people always say "I'd pay for high quality content". And it gets upvoted, dozens of children comments of people agreeing with them, and everyone pats themselves on the back for such an easy and obvious solution. Unfortunately, that's simply not the reality we live in. The vast majority (95% or more) of internet users would rather have their content subsidized by ads than have to pay. This has been proven time and time again by the countless subscription model failures over the last decade. Sure, some sites have found success, but those that do are the extremely rare exceptions, not the rule. And none have found fantastic success. How many subscription model websites are in the top 10? Top 100? Top 1000? Subscription models just don't work. Nuff said, really. There's 10+ years of data to back it up.

girvo 11y ago
> Subscription models just don't work I'm not disagreeing with you, but that still doesn't refute the argument that you're selling your audience to someone else without their consent (and before you say "then don't use the site", you don't get to choose whether or not you're exposed to the given sites ads until you go on it, in which case it's already too late. Unless, of course, you use an ad-blocker -- which is why I'm of the opinion that people should use ad-blockers, but I disagree with the article in that I feel there can be cases of responsible, acceptable advertising. Things aren't so black and white, from either side)
- mahranch 11y ago
  > but that still doesn't refute the argument that you're selling your audience to someone else without their consent You watch the big bang theory and they play an ad during the commercial break for colgate. Did you get sold something without your consent? It's literally the exact same thing. When you browse the web or when you watch TV, it's inherent to the media that you will see ads and that ads subsidize that content. Admitting to anything else but that inherent truth is (to me) just technicalities and/or pointless pedantry. Unless it's your first time on the 'net, you understand ads subsidize the content you see. Pretending like it's some injustice is almost laughable. It's like you're saying commercials on TV are taking advantage of you every time they cut to a commercial break.
  - hartpuff 11y ago
    TV ads are not tracking you, taking data from you and/or providing an attack vector for malware or other cybercrime. So literally not the exact same thing.
    - deong 11y ago
      That's an argument against a certain type of advertising. The link explicitly rejects the distinction between ads that monitor and track you and ads than are entirely passive.
      - chongli 11y ago
        I agree with the position set forth by the link. I don't want to be advertised to at all. I cut the cord, I no longer watch TV, I've stopped following sports, I run uBlock Origin... Any site that decides to block ad blockers will simply no longer get a visit from me. I think advertising is one of the lowest, most pernicious forms of psychological manipulation out there. It simply cannot be done in good faith, by definition. Some content creators even try to level with their audience about it and say "I'm just putting up this ad to get paid, just ignore it (or click it but don't buy anything) if you want." That's not dealing with the advertising company in good faith. To me, the only good faith relationship between content creator and audience is the patronage model. This model has endured for centuries and some of our culture's very best artists have relied on it.
      - hartpuff 11y ago
        Is there such a thing as an entirely passive online ad? Any clickable ad at least knows which site you were on when you clicked; TV advertisers don't know what I was watching when I saw their ad. That aside, the crucial difference is still this: TV ads cannot be removed. If they could be, they would be. Since online ads can be removed, and since doing so provides an enhanced user experience, and since (passive or not) online advertising facilitates the gross pollution of the internet by financing endless numbers of splog, malware and other content-free junk sites, that nobody would ever pay for directly, why not block them?
  - 11y ago
mbrock 11y ago
People pay for plenty of content on Kindle Store, for example. But "books" are on a higher shelf compared to the "content" that people consume mostly out of restless boredom, for which they perhaps are reluctant to pay because they don't really care about it that much anyway.
- deong 11y ago
  At least as big an issue I think is that for Kindle books, the analogy is roughly "Amazon = the Internet". If there was a single vendor who knew my payment information and transparently and simply just made it all work, I'd be far more likely to consider paying for one article here, one article there, etc. People will pay large monthly bills to read stuff on the Internet -- they do so today to their ISP. But for a variety of reasons, no one is going to pay 750 individual monthly bills for $0.06 each to all the different pages they've stumbled through during the month, even if it works out to be about the same amount of money.
  - mbrock 11y ago
    I don't want to pay $0.06 for anything because what could possibly be simultaneously interesting and worth so little? On the other hand, I gladly pay $5 through the simple checkout thing on LouisCK.com because I trust and respect him and want to support his business. This is kind of why I'm so lukewarm about the idea of micro payments. It seems to assume a world where everybody gives tiny tips to little blobs of semi-worthless generic content that they probably consume on the bathroom. I've paid for downloads of independent ebooks too and would happily do it again. If payments are really tedious then that's a general problem and, like, Stripe could just make a browser extension to make it utterly trivial. VISA works pretty well after all, no? For me, the overwhelming problem seems to be that I'm only genuinely interested in a small subset of high quality things (books, videos, articles) by people I have real respect for. With most news articles, I'd pay for the privilege of never even hearing about them. But if someone made a plain text newsletter with coherent, intelligent news commentary, I wouldn't think twice about filling out a Stripe pop up for that. I've paid for dumber things in my life.
parenthephobia 11y ago
There's an obvious reason subscriptions don't work, and that's that whilst $4/mo is affordable for many people, that's only for one site. If I had to pay $4/mo each for all the random sites I visit each month... I wouldn't visit those sites any more. What's really needed is a workable, simple, micropayments model where users can pay just one monthly fee and the sites they visit are compensated automatically. (And, as an incorrigible cynic, I always wonder whether comments like mahranch's are made by people with a vested interest in the online advertising industry. They certainly wouldn't stand to benefit if the Internet switched to micropayments.)
- bobajeff 11y ago
  That sounds like Brave's bitcoin protocol they are working on. Thing is, if sites are automatically compensated once users visit how does that change the motivation away from click bait?
  - ssharp 11y ago
    Well, there's really no reason why Bitcoin should/would be a part of it. Bitcoin is no better at microtransactions than any other payment solution, it's actually worse. So you're left with solutions that involve "off-chain"-type transactions and even then, you have a MAJOR adoption hurdle with Bitcoin that you don't have with credit cards and ACH.
    - bobajeff 11y ago
      I guess the reason Bitcoin is used is because the payments are to be decentralised and without opt-in from the site's that are getting paid. As opposed to services like Flattr that require signup from the site's before hand.
  - parenthephobia 11y ago
    It doesn't. Does it need to? I think it's up to the user to avoid click-bait. Possibly, knowing that they're directly (or very nearly directly) paying for visits will make some users think twice before following a click-baity link. But TBH, I'm not convinced people in general hate click-bait as much as people on HN seem to. People buy magazines like National Enquirer, which to me are the print version of click-bait dross.
5555624 11y ago
There needs to be some sort of combination between subscriptions and "pay as you go." I pay for The Washington Post, since I tend to read it almost every day. I won't pay $4/month for Wired, since I'm not a regular reader. I'd pay say 50 cents an article, though, if that were an option. That goes for The Economist, Scientific American, and a number of other sites.
- deong 11y ago
  The main issue with this type of payment model isn't the money; it's the mechanics of it. If something behind the scenes automatically took my $0.50, kept track of the fact that I was entitled to read it on any device and browser I might use anytime in the future, and didn't bug me about it ever again, then it might be workable. I don't have a problem paying a few cents for an article. I have a problem manually entering into the transaction to pay a few cents every time I want to read an article throughout the day.
a_imho 11y ago
Netflix and Spotify might argue with you. Subscriptions might not work in all case, but as these threads demonstrate, there are many alternatives depending on your content (micropayments, or sponsored content for newspapers). Ads of today don't work, the widespread and increasing use of content blockers back it up.
- manigandham 11y ago
  Spotify isnt really making money. The other music services have all failed. Netflix is the only streaming service seeing some success, and they don't own or produce most of their content or the delivery systems. If they did, their business wouldn't be viable either.
  - narrowrail 11y ago
    Given that Spotify is private, how would you know if Spotify is making money? How about Pandora Radio? They have about 80M users; is that a failure? What exactly is meant by Netflix not owning their delivery system? That seems like a rather specious argument. HBO GO, Hulu, MLB, Sling TV and the 100s of other OTT services seem to be missing from your industry understanding.
    - jasode 11y ago
      >Given that Spotify is private, how would you know if Spotify is making money? Industry observers see the financial numbers from Spotify filings in the UK and Luxembourg and can piece together that they spend more than they take in. Another source of information about Spotify health was the Sony email leaks[1] revealing the unfavorable terms to license the Sony music catalog. Lastly, CEO Daneil Ek has been on record[2] saying, "we believe in the business model of Spotify, and believe that ultimately we’ll become profitable at some point..." It is not wild speculation that Spotify is losing money. >How about Pandora Radio? They have about 80M users; is that a failure? Pandora is also still losing money.[3] Whether it's 80M or 800M users, it's a failure if the business can't turn a profit. (Otherwise known as costs exceeding revenue.) The overwhelming "costs" in both music streaming services is the royalty payouts for licensing music. So far, not enough people can be convinced to pay $9.99/month. Or, the people that are willing to pay something-per-month are not willing to pay higher amounts such as $19.99.[4] So far, the financial numbers are not working. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_ha... [2]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/07/daniel-ek-spotify-free-music-save-industry-not-kill-it http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/07/daniel-ek-... [3]http://www.techtimes.com/articles/98853/20151026/pandora-continues-lose-money-blames-apple-music-subscriber-loss.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/98853/20151026/pandora-con... [4]https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/201745891-How-much-does-TIDAL-cost- https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/201745891-How-mu...
dwc 11y ago
I've struggled with this myself. A while back, due to linkage from here and other sites, I had used up my free allotment of free nytimes stories and thought, "hey, let me see if I can pay a bit to raise the limit, because I'm willing to pay a bit for journalism." So I checked out their subscription plans and could find nothing even remotely close to worthwhile for me. There were disconnects between how they viewed subscriptions vs. what I wanted: * They offered access to all of their content for a price that would have been fair if I would be reading some significant fraction of it. But I wanted to raise my cap from X stories/month to 2X stories per month and have it cost something reasonable. Or something close, like 5X stories. They need to get over the idea that the way people read news today is by going to a single site and reading through a fair amount of it, like people used to do with a physical newspaper. * The subscriptions were for what I'd call "odd" time periods like 6 weeks. WAT. Why not 5 or 7 weeks, or multiples of 10 days? What happens when my 6 weeks is up? I start getting renewal emails? Quit messing around and quote a recurring monthly rate with discount for longer commitments. Anyway, I went there intending to give them some money even though I only occasionally go over the free limit, and left without signing up, slightly bewildered.
hartpuff 11y ago
> Subscription models just don't work. Nuff said, really. There's 10+ years of data to back it up. The subscription model has worked for 20 years in the adult industry, even though free online porn has existed since the invention of the GIF.
gherkin0 11y ago
> That's why I don't like this sentence. Every time the topic of ads come up here or on reddit, people always say "I'd pay for high quality content". And it gets upvoted, dozens of children comments of people agreeing with them, and everyone pats themselves on the back for such an easy and obvious solution. I'm willing to pay for high-quality content, it's just that whenever a "pay" option is offered, it's usually overpriced. The standard Netflix subscription costs ~$10/month; the online subscription to Wired costs $4/month. Is accessing a single random website (Wired) worth 40% of Netflix to me? No, not really. Am I going to spend hundreds of dollars a month to individually subscribe to every website I use? No, I'm not doing that either. Add to that that I'm extremely wary of subscriptions for obvious reasons. I'd gladly pay for content if I could subscribe to most websites I use with a single service at reasonable prices (or better yet, buy credits/access-triggered weekly passes for them).
shasta 11y ago
I think this is related to the importance of defaults. If a site charged $4 per year, and then, in an unrelated transaction a user could opt-in to advertising to cover that $4 fee, you'd see a tiny fraction of people expressing the "preference" you think they are expressing.
coldtea 11y ago
>Now if only the other billions of people on this planet felt the same way. Anybody asked them?
conceit 11y ago
> Subscription models just don't work he said and looked at his torrents

girvo 11y ago

> Subscription models just don't work I'm not disagreeing with you, but that still doesn't refute the argument that you're selling your audience to someone else without their consent (and before you say "then don't use the site", you don't get to choose whether or not you're exposed to the given sites ads until you go on it, in which case it's already too late. Unless, of course, you use an ad-blocker -- which is why I'm of the opinion that people should use ad-blockers, but I disagree with the article in that I feel there can be cases of responsible, acceptable advertising. Things aren't so black and white, from either side)

mahranch 11y ago
> but that still doesn't refute the argument that you're selling your audience to someone else without their consent You watch the big bang theory and they play an ad during the commercial break for colgate. Did you get sold something without your consent? It's literally the exact same thing. When you browse the web or when you watch TV, it's inherent to the media that you will see ads and that ads subsidize that content. Admitting to anything else but that inherent truth is (to me) just technicalities and/or pointless pedantry. Unless it's your first time on the 'net, you understand ads subsidize the content you see. Pretending like it's some injustice is almost laughable. It's like you're saying commercials on TV are taking advantage of you every time they cut to a commercial break.
- hartpuff 11y ago
  TV ads are not tracking you, taking data from you and/or providing an attack vector for malware or other cybercrime. So literally not the exact same thing.
  - deong 11y ago
    That's an argument against a certain type of advertising. The link explicitly rejects the distinction between ads that monitor and track you and ads than are entirely passive.
    - chongli 11y ago
      I agree with the position set forth by the link. I don't want to be advertised to at all. I cut the cord, I no longer watch TV, I've stopped following sports, I run uBlock Origin... Any site that decides to block ad blockers will simply no longer get a visit from me. I think advertising is one of the lowest, most pernicious forms of psychological manipulation out there. It simply cannot be done in good faith, by definition. Some content creators even try to level with their audience about it and say "I'm just putting up this ad to get paid, just ignore it (or click it but don't buy anything) if you want." That's not dealing with the advertising company in good faith. To me, the only good faith relationship between content creator and audience is the patronage model. This model has endured for centuries and some of our culture's very best artists have relied on it.
    - hartpuff 11y ago
      Is there such a thing as an entirely passive online ad? Any clickable ad at least knows which site you were on when you clicked; TV advertisers don't know what I was watching when I saw their ad. That aside, the crucial difference is still this: TV ads cannot be removed. If they could be, they would be. Since online ads can be removed, and since doing so provides an enhanced user experience, and since (passive or not) online advertising facilitates the gross pollution of the internet by financing endless numbers of splog, malware and other content-free junk sites, that nobody would ever pay for directly, why not block them?
- 11y ago

mbrock 11y ago

People pay for plenty of content on Kindle Store, for example. But "books" are on a higher shelf compared to the "content" that people consume mostly out of restless boredom, for which they perhaps are reluctant to pay because they don't really care about it that much anyway.

deong 11y ago
At least as big an issue I think is that for Kindle books, the analogy is roughly "Amazon = the Internet". If there was a single vendor who knew my payment information and transparently and simply just made it all work, I'd be far more likely to consider paying for one article here, one article there, etc. People will pay large monthly bills to read stuff on the Internet -- they do so today to their ISP. But for a variety of reasons, no one is going to pay 750 individual monthly bills for $0.06 each to all the different pages they've stumbled through during the month, even if it works out to be about the same amount of money.
- mbrock 11y ago
  I don't want to pay $0.06 for anything because what could possibly be simultaneously interesting and worth so little? On the other hand, I gladly pay $5 through the simple checkout thing on LouisCK.com because I trust and respect him and want to support his business. This is kind of why I'm so lukewarm about the idea of micro payments. It seems to assume a world where everybody gives tiny tips to little blobs of semi-worthless generic content that they probably consume on the bathroom. I've paid for downloads of independent ebooks too and would happily do it again. If payments are really tedious then that's a general problem and, like, Stripe could just make a browser extension to make it utterly trivial. VISA works pretty well after all, no? For me, the overwhelming problem seems to be that I'm only genuinely interested in a small subset of high quality things (books, videos, articles) by people I have real respect for. With most news articles, I'd pay for the privilege of never even hearing about them. But if someone made a plain text newsletter with coherent, intelligent news commentary, I wouldn't think twice about filling out a Stripe pop up for that. I've paid for dumber things in my life.

parenthephobia 11y ago

There's an obvious reason subscriptions don't work, and that's that whilst $4/mo is affordable for many people, that's only for one site. If I had to pay $4/mo each for all the random sites I visit each month... I wouldn't visit those sites any more. What's really needed is a workable, simple, micropayments model where users can pay just one monthly fee and the sites they visit are compensated automatically. (And, as an incorrigible cynic, I always wonder whether comments like mahranch's are made by people with a vested interest in the online advertising industry. They certainly wouldn't stand to benefit if the Internet switched to micropayments.)

bobajeff 11y ago
That sounds like Brave's bitcoin protocol they are working on. Thing is, if sites are automatically compensated once users visit how does that change the motivation away from click bait?
- ssharp 11y ago
  Well, there's really no reason why Bitcoin should/would be a part of it. Bitcoin is no better at microtransactions than any other payment solution, it's actually worse. So you're left with solutions that involve "off-chain"-type transactions and even then, you have a MAJOR adoption hurdle with Bitcoin that you don't have with credit cards and ACH.
  - bobajeff 11y ago
    I guess the reason Bitcoin is used is because the payments are to be decentralised and without opt-in from the site's that are getting paid. As opposed to services like Flattr that require signup from the site's before hand.
- parenthephobia 11y ago
  It doesn't. Does it need to? I think it's up to the user to avoid click-bait. Possibly, knowing that they're directly (or very nearly directly) paying for visits will make some users think twice before following a click-baity link. But TBH, I'm not convinced people in general hate click-bait as much as people on HN seem to. People buy magazines like National Enquirer, which to me are the print version of click-bait dross.

5555624 11y ago

There needs to be some sort of combination between subscriptions and "pay as you go." I pay for The Washington Post, since I tend to read it almost every day. I won't pay $4/month for Wired, since I'm not a regular reader. I'd pay say 50 cents an article, though, if that were an option. That goes for The Economist, Scientific American, and a number of other sites.

deong 11y ago
The main issue with this type of payment model isn't the money; it's the mechanics of it. If something behind the scenes automatically took my $0.50, kept track of the fact that I was entitled to read it on any device and browser I might use anytime in the future, and didn't bug me about it ever again, then it might be workable. I don't have a problem paying a few cents for an article. I have a problem manually entering into the transaction to pay a few cents every time I want to read an article throughout the day.

a_imho 11y ago

Netflix and Spotify might argue with you. Subscriptions might not work in all case, but as these threads demonstrate, there are many alternatives depending on your content (micropayments, or sponsored content for newspapers). Ads of today don't work, the widespread and increasing use of content blockers back it up.

manigandham 11y ago
Spotify isnt really making money. The other music services have all failed. Netflix is the only streaming service seeing some success, and they don't own or produce most of their content or the delivery systems. If they did, their business wouldn't be viable either.
- narrowrail 11y ago
  Given that Spotify is private, how would you know if Spotify is making money? How about Pandora Radio? They have about 80M users; is that a failure? What exactly is meant by Netflix not owning their delivery system? That seems like a rather specious argument. HBO GO, Hulu, MLB, Sling TV and the 100s of other OTT services seem to be missing from your industry understanding.
  - jasode 11y ago
    >Given that Spotify is private, how would you know if Spotify is making money? Industry observers see the financial numbers from Spotify filings in the UK and Luxembourg and can piece together that they spend more than they take in. Another source of information about Spotify health was the Sony email leaks[1] revealing the unfavorable terms to license the Sony music catalog. Lastly, CEO Daneil Ek has been on record[2] saying, "we believe in the business model of Spotify, and believe that ultimately we’ll become profitable at some point..." It is not wild speculation that Spotify is losing money. >How about Pandora Radio? They have about 80M users; is that a failure? Pandora is also still losing money.[3] Whether it's 80M or 800M users, it's a failure if the business can't turn a profit. (Otherwise known as costs exceeding revenue.) The overwhelming "costs" in both music streaming services is the royalty payouts for licensing music. So far, not enough people can be convinced to pay $9.99/month. Or, the people that are willing to pay something-per-month are not willing to pay higher amounts such as $19.99.[4] So far, the financial numbers are not working. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_hack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Pictures_Entertainment_ha... [2]http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/07/daniel-ek-spotify-free-music-save-industry-not-kill-it http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/07/daniel-ek-... [3]http://www.techtimes.com/articles/98853/20151026/pandora-continues-lose-money-blames-apple-music-subscriber-loss.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/98853/20151026/pandora-con... [4]https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/201745891-How-much-does-TIDAL-cost- https://support.tidal.com/hc/en-us/articles/201745891-How-mu...

dwc 11y ago

I've struggled with this myself. A while back, due to linkage from here and other sites, I had used up my free allotment of free nytimes stories and thought, "hey, let me see if I can pay a bit to raise the limit, because I'm willing to pay a bit for journalism." So I checked out their subscription plans and could find nothing even remotely close to worthwhile for me. There were disconnects between how they viewed subscriptions vs. what I wanted: * They offered access to all of their content for a price that would have been fair if I would be reading some significant fraction of it. But I wanted to raise my cap from X stories/month to 2X stories per month and have it cost something reasonable. Or something close, like 5X stories. They need to get over the idea that the way people read news today is by going to a single site and reading through a fair amount of it, like people used to do with a physical newspaper. * The subscriptions were for what I'd call "odd" time periods like 6 weeks. WAT. Why not 5 or 7 weeks, or multiples of 10 days? What happens when my 6 weeks is up? I start getting renewal emails? Quit messing around and quote a recurring monthly rate with discount for longer commitments. Anyway, I went there intending to give them some money even though I only occasionally go over the free limit, and left without signing up, slightly bewildered.

hartpuff 11y ago

> Subscription models just don't work. Nuff said, really. There's 10+ years of data to back it up. The subscription model has worked for 20 years in the adult industry, even though free online porn has existed since the invention of the GIF.

gherkin0 11y ago

> That's why I don't like this sentence. Every time the topic of ads come up here or on reddit, people always say "I'd pay for high quality content". And it gets upvoted, dozens of children comments of people agreeing with them, and everyone pats themselves on the back for such an easy and obvious solution. I'm willing to pay for high-quality content, it's just that whenever a "pay" option is offered, it's usually overpriced. The standard Netflix subscription costs ~$10/month; the online subscription to Wired costs $4/month. Is accessing a single random website (Wired) worth 40% of Netflix to me? No, not really. Am I going to spend hundreds of dollars a month to individually subscribe to every website I use? No, I'm not doing that either. Add to that that I'm extremely wary of subscriptions for obvious reasons. I'd gladly pay for content if I could subscribe to most websites I use with a single service at reasonable prices (or better yet, buy credits/access-triggered weekly passes for them).

shasta 11y ago

I think this is related to the importance of defaults. If a site charged $4 per year, and then, in an unrelated transaction a user could opt-in to advertising to cover that $4 fee, you'd see a tiny fraction of people expressing the "preference" you think they are expressing.

coldtea 11y ago

>Now if only the other billions of people on this planet felt the same way. Anybody asked them?

conceit 11y ago

> Subscription models just don't work he said and looked at his torrents