3 ms·

I just don't think there are enough people in America right now with any extra money to spend on articles. The middle class has to worry about paying for food

I just don't think there are enough people in America right now with any extra money to spend on articles. The middle class has to worry about paying for food and necessities. Millennials can't afford cable, and people think they will pay for internet articles they are used to getting for free? That business model is doomed from day one.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago
I'm not sure that's true, I just think the price has to be right. For example, I would gladly pay a penny (UK money) per month to access an ad-free Medium, even though I never consciously visit that site, just because it's such a small amount of money that it's not worth bothering over. Same would go, for example, for Hacker News. Obviously, a penny is a ridiculous under-exaggeration, but I feel it demonstrates the point well; 60,000,000 times a penny isn't bad money. And clearly a real-world business model would charge at least an order of magnitude more than that. The real problem here is transferring that money in a cost-effective way. Would it be impossible for a central gateway to manage that task, charging providers a small fee for the service?
Baeocystin 10y ago
People made similar arguments about selling MP3's when piracy was free. As soon as Apple was able to remove enough friction from the buying process, the market exploded. Even people with the most modest of incomes used to regularly pay a quarter to read the daily newspaper. I see no reason why they wouldn't again, if the process was smooth enough.
mercer 10y ago
I'm surrounded by millennials, and most of the pay for Spotify and Netflix, or share an account with family members. Furthermore, while I'm not 'poor', I'm quite frugal, and yet I've spent quite a bit of money already on Blendle articles. The biggest hurdle in my case was signing up and connecting my account to a payment system. But once that barrier was crossed, paying somewhere between 10 cents and 1 euro on a article became a (concerning) easy thing to do. I suspect I'm not alone in this.

oneeyedpigeon 10y ago

I'm not sure that's true, I just think the price has to be right. For example, I would gladly pay a penny (UK money) per month to access an ad-free Medium, even though I never consciously visit that site, just because it's such a small amount of money that it's not worth bothering over. Same would go, for example, for Hacker News. Obviously, a penny is a ridiculous under-exaggeration, but I feel it demonstrates the point well; 60,000,000 times a penny isn't bad money. And clearly a real-world business model would charge at least an order of magnitude more than that. The real problem here is transferring that money in a cost-effective way. Would it be impossible for a central gateway to manage that task, charging providers a small fee for the service?

Baeocystin 10y ago

People made similar arguments about selling MP3's when piracy was free. As soon as Apple was able to remove enough friction from the buying process, the market exploded. Even people with the most modest of incomes used to regularly pay a quarter to read the daily newspaper. I see no reason why they wouldn't again, if the process was smooth enough.

mercer 10y ago

I'm surrounded by millennials, and most of the pay for Spotify and Netflix, or share an account with family members. Furthermore, while I'm not 'poor', I'm quite frugal, and yet I've spent quite a bit of money already on Blendle articles. The biggest hurdle in my case was signing up and connecting my account to a payment system. But once that barrier was crossed, paying somewhere between 10 cents and 1 euro on a article became a (concerning) easy thing to do. I suspect I'm not alone in this.