Yes, the abonement payment is a great way to take the pain out of people's face. But most abo services have a long-a quitting period, like fitness centers usual

Yes, the abonement payment is a great way to take the pain out of people's face. But most abo services have a long-a quitting period, like fitness centers usually have 6-12 months you need to pay after already deciding you don't want to anymore. This is really bad and painful, and these service providers know that as well. But they still do it, so there must be a good reason for it. I just suspect that abo is not the best way to make money because it also limits how much the user spends each month. For instance there may be a few months I don't spend a single cent on Steam (the computer game webshop/package manager), but when I spend, I spend a lot more than in a year of using Netflix. And even if I'm excited about Netflix, I can't give them more money (I have the biggest abo already). Therefore I would say making money is not about the payment but about the sales process. It must be fun to buy and increase your excitement, then you'll buy more, maybe even unreasonable much. That's also why Kickstarter probably makes more money than Flattr. They enable and enforce good sales tactics with videos, picture driven articles and easily shared Kickstarter pages, while Flattr is only a button on another person's freely structured page. One increases excitement, the other doesn't.