21 ms·

Letting users skip our paywall if they wrote an apology

205 points by justswim 9y ago

coryl 9y ago
A clever way to get feedback actually, by incentivizing them for it! I'm actually having this issue right now, we have easy to access feedback forms, but users just don't bother to complain or comment.
kilolima 9y ago
Who cares... site does not load with javascript disabled.
- trumpownsyou420 9y ago
  kill yourself.
- CommentCard 9y ago
  It's using react.js, maybe try unfiltering the site before heading to the comment section to tell everyone how much you don't care. This seems like an interesting way to do research on the best ways to convert these users who don't want to pay outright. Maybe selectively show ads to the free users?
- KyeRussell 9y ago
  Yeah, cool, so like most of the modern Internet then? Accepting JavaScript's prevalence—even given its many many many many many flaws—is something us pragmatists that actually decide to use the Internet to do things decided to do long long ago.
  - s17n 9y ago
    Uh huh tell me more about these "things" that you "do". If there's a web app that I want to use, I whitelist it for js. For general browsing, I keep it off. Ironically, this works fine for the same reason that paywalls will never succeed - there is so much content out there that any individual piece of it has essentially no value.
    - Veen 9y ago
      > there is so much content out there that any individual piece of it has essentially no value Zero multiplied by anything is zero, so if all individual pieces of content are worthless, so is content as a whole. But of course that's not true because content isn't fungible. There's an infinity of content, but, unless you think a cat meme listicle is equivalent to War and Peace, it doesn't matter. The best content will always be worth paying for to people who care about what they put into their brain.
      - s17n 9y ago
        I'm talking about browsing HN - nothing getting posted here is equivalent to War and Peace. If a particular link doesn't work because of javascript, I can just go on to the next one.
  - Lammy 9y ago
    The page is text and static images and it's kind of absurd for it not to render without JS enabled even in 2017.
- jlgaddis 9y ago
  > site does not load with javascript disabled Who cares?
  - jabot 9y ago
    Anyone on mobile? Anyone who doesn't want a cryptocurrency miner in his browser? Anyone security conscious?
- superkuh 9y ago
  I agree. I'll JS whitelist the domain itself in good faith but when it's more than 4 CDN and framework domains deep, all loading each other in serially, I'm just going to close the tab. It's even worse when all they're trying to do is show simple text.
  - NoGravitas 9y ago
    Yeah. I run uBlock Origin in "medium mode", defaulting to blocking third-party resources, but I'm pretty used to enabling them to get sites working. Enabling the most likely domains on this site just didn't do anything, so I'm just not going to bother doing anything more.
- Veen 9y ago
  It's fine for any website to choose who it wants to serve. I don't imagine most JavaScript-dependent services are sad about losing a fraction of a percent of their potential users. It's not for them in the first place.
- CaptSpify 9y ago
  Agreed. It's funny to me that someone wants to charge people for their online service, but can't even make a simple web-page fail gracefully. That's a pretty strong signal to me of the quality of their online service
cpncrunch 9y ago
Anyone can afford a dollar. I'm guessing the real reason these people don't pay is because they don't think it's worth paying $1 to generate a meme. IMO I think it makes more sense to put advertising on the main site and fund it that way. If I was a user of this service I'd prefer to have some ads on the site rather than paying $1 for it. I don't feel it makes sense to remove the branded gifs...that's how you will grow your business, and it's not worth removing it because someone is just too cheap to pay. Anyway, it's your business and not mine, so do what you feel is best.
- nlawalker 9y ago
  >> don't think it's worth paying $1 Key word there is paying. A buck is fine with me, but I don't have a good way to offer it. I'm not giving you my credit card number, email or phone number; I'm not going to spend even 10 seconds filling out a form just for your site; I don't use PayPal; I don't currently authorize you to ever take any more than the buck I want to give you right now; I want a refund if the functionality doesn't work as described. Has anyone made any real progress in solving this problem?
  - devdoomari 9y ago
    um... bitcoin? heard like 3 years ago that bitcoin will handle all sorts of micro-transactions... anyone know what happened?
    - cstrat 9y ago
      I haven't used BTC in a long time but last I read transactions take a very long time to process because the blocksize is too small to contain all the transactions that took place. I read (not sure if this is correct) that transaction fees needed to be upwards of $20 to ensure the transaction was included in the next block.
    - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
      Bitcoin transactions have something like a $5 average transaction fee. You can offer less but your transaction won't get processed as quickly. Bitcoin is already slow at processing transactions. Disclaimer: I don't use bitcoin. The $5 number is outdated, but from the graphs I could find in a quick search it seemed to be rising consistently.
noncoml 9y ago
Here is my honest brutal “apology”: I wouldn’t pay more than a couple of cents to use your service. If you want to monetize it find a way to allow nano-payments. You are not adding as much value as you think.
- duiker101 9y ago
  One dollar is something you could afford. And if you can't/don't think it's of enough value then the watermark version is good too for sure. And if you are a content creator that needs lots of them then the 10$\month will be fine. Let users pay with their wallet. Not everyone would know how to do this in some graphics software so there is a value.
  - newen 9y ago
    It doesn't matter if I can afford it... I can afford to spend $500 too. Doesn't mean I'm going to spend it on just anything. Making a meme on a website is barely worth the time I spend doing it. The $10 seems reasonable if I make a ton of memes and it's a good website though. The $1 is just ridiculous and they should just take that option out purely because it changes the dynamics as to how you view the website. Charging $1 for a meme is so ridiculous that I think people will look at the $1 and run, while viewing it as a monthly $10 service will be more palatable.
    - deleted 9y ago
      [deleted]
    - whostolemyhat 9y ago
      It's $1 for removing the watermark from the video. The free version still has the watermark.
  - thedrbrian 9y ago
    If you’re a content creator you’ll have a stand alone program that’ll do more than add text to a video.
- 9y ago
justhackedme 9y ago
God this is sad. Startup desperately begging for money and people obliging. Then they create an ad for their product out of it as if it's "some useful goss they researched". I should make a useless startup. So many cheap tactics that people fall head over heels for.
bearbearbear 9y ago
I'm sorry I'm not apologizing for being poor.
- s73ver_ 9y ago
  Then keep the watermark. But don't feel that just because you're poor that their costs are any different.
  - bearbearbear 9y ago
    I didn't ask them to have costs or a website.
    - s73ver_ 9y ago
      And? Your point being? Should the grocery store also give you free food because you didn't ask them to have a store? Again, you being poor sucks. That does not change things for them, however. They still need to make money, and if you don't have the money, then you can go without. You will still live.
      - bearbearbear 9y ago
        > Should the grocery store also give you free food because you didn't ask them to have a store? Yes, that's why I have food stamps.
        mikestew 9y ago
        I don’t think that you understand how food stamps work.
    - skinnymuch 9y ago
      What? What about any store or company? You didn't ask anyone to have costs. They do. And you need or want to pay for some stuff at some point. What's your point? Seems quite entitled.
jancsika 9y ago
Did you get the permission of the users whose responses you posted?
- chipperyman573 9y ago
  Legally they're fine because the responses were anonymous and none of the users would reasonably believe that their responses would remain completly private. Ethically (at least in my opinion) is the same, as long as they're kept anonymous and there's nothing personal or private in the responses they can use them for any reason. Especially because they were given in lieu of payment.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    Are you saying that expecting any privacy is unreasonable these days?
    - chipperyman573 9y ago
      1. I never said that, please stop putting words in my mouth. 2. In my opinion, posting completely anonymized responses is not a violation of privacy
shash7 9y ago
Don't think of it as asking for 1 dollar. Think like this: Say if you walk up to me irl and ask for a dollar, I'll be like, sure here's your change and open up my wallet. Online, asking for one dollar is too much mental overhead. Its not like people don't want to pay, but you need to make it easy for them to pay you. Personally, I would stick with ad revenue instead of 1 dollar payments.
- Retra 9y ago
  Online, asking for $1 is asking for someone's credit card info.
  - mirimir 9y ago
    Right, and Mirimir has no credit cards :( I used to argue for Bitcoin, but at $6K that's crazy. However, a EZPass-like token funded with cards, cryptocurrencies, money in the mail, etc. That would be cool.
    - thisacctforreal 9y ago
      Being pedantic; the fluctuation is what’s crazy, if they started at $6k it’d be no problem because you’d just think in terms of thousandths of BTC (or even satoshis) instead of whole coins.
      - mirimir 9y ago
        The problem is the transaction fees needed for timely confirmation.
    - Cyphase 9y ago
      > I used to argue for Bitcoin, but at $6K that's crazy. Well, Bitcoin may not be good for micropayments, but that's not the reason; you don't have to have integer numbers of bitcoin, you can have 0.00016666 bitcoins (~$1 at $6k/BTC).
      - 9y ago
mango1900 9y ago
This might get downvoted, but let me play devils advocate... the $1 is too cheap. You don’t value my time if you’re making me whip out my credit card and go through the painful process of checking out for transacting only a dollar from me. You’re also extremely downplaying the value of your product. if it was only worth a dollar, you would likely not be building a startup around it :) Most people don’t know how much something is worth. Try not to lower price, rather, increase value. Under the sad faces, I’d change the messaging. Its generally understood (even by the layperson) that the true cost of technology is very low. What this really costs, and this is true, is the time-value of your development team (and associated market salary). “It takes real people to build and maintain this” might be more effective messaging. All that said, this does seem like an interesting way to gather user feedback. Good luck!
- bartread 9y ago
  I'm inclined to agree with this. Like you say, increase the price and offer more value: there's a $10 subscription, but how about a $10 one-off, which allows me to create as many videos as I like for the next two weeks, or next month? I'm sure there are probably other - perhaps more interesting/creative - ways you could offer more value if you spent some time thinking about it. Also, offering payment options that don't require me to fill in a form with my credit card details for yet another frigging website. I hate to recommend them in some ways - because they've caused me aggro so many times with transactions larger than a few hundred quid - but PayPal might be a good option here.
- deadmetheny 9y ago
  >$1 is too cheap The product is a meme maker, and that $1 gets a watermark removed on said meme. That isn't even remotely worth $1 for a single instance. There's plenty of free software that can do the same thing, albeit less streamlined. Definitely a clever way to solicit feedback, though.
peterburkimsher 9y ago
I like this idea of avoiding a paywall with a reason. I read many articles from The Guardian, who use a banner ad to promote their premium subscriptions. Due to my unstable life, I can't commit to regular payments from one bank account in one country for more than a couple of months at the longest. The Guardian and many other news sites have entire sections dedicated to Bitcoin. But they don't accept it as a payment method. I emailed their customer feedback, and was pleasantly surprised at the encouraging reply. Their management will be discussing whether to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. If the news websites start accepting Bitcoin, they'll be more likely to post less sensational articles about it, and the value proposition to the end user becomes more clear (remove ads). The fact that Bitcoin payments aren't traceable encourages factual articles instead of promoting articles that indulge the political opinions of the people funding the news agency.
shmerl 9y ago
As usual, greed slows down progress.
- vortico 9y ago
  But why should the creator care about progress in this particular area of the web if he's not getting paid?
- bartread 9y ago
  Greed? It's a startup posting on Hacker News about how they're trying to build a business, which is right in the bullseye of the Hacker News schtick as far as I can tell. Since when has it been greedy to try and make a living, even doing something random and frivolous? The world needs random and frivolous things. Regardless, I thought it was an interesting experiment.
  - shmerl 9y ago
    Wrong article. I was posting in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15591020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15591020 but misplaced the comment.
    - bartread 9y ago
      Haha - classic. I've done that before too.
alkonaut 9y ago
If the options were "click here to pay $1" and "click here to pay $0" then I'd happily pay for tons of services and paywalls. If the option is "Click here to pay $0" vs. "Click here to either sign up or do a 5 step one time checkout" then it's not clear, at least not for a service/product I'm unsure about. (Disclaimer: I don't have PayPal or similar - I'm not sure if there exists a single click payment system that I'd be willing to use)
stevefan1999 9y ago
That means you are publicly shaming your "pirating" visitors? That's morally unacceptable!
- Angostura 9y ago
  Except, I see no mention that anything is made public.
  - jwilk 9y ago
    Some of the "apologies" were published in this very article.
underwoodley 9y ago
From an economic point of view, wasting people's time in exchange for a free service is worse than either charging them what the market can bear, or providing a free service. If you charged them, you would benefit. If you didn't charge, the users would benefit. But if you make a demand on their time which doesn't have any benefit for you, both of you are worse off.
- jchw 9y ago
  This, to me, seems like a strange way of thinking. They're not 'wasting people's time,' they're making a request of them in exchange for a service. Instead of turning them away entirely as a full paywall may have, they got some information or at least amusement out of them, and the user still gets their service. Users benefit either way; the question is whether they have to pay in exchange for it or answer a question in exchange for it. The latter may seem wasteful to you, but clearly it didn't to the owners of that website.
  - alphaalpha101 9y ago
    They're wasting time in the same sense that bitcoin is wasting energy: maybe they're technically doing something, but it's still a waste. Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy. Does it technically get used? Sure, it does, it's used to verify transactions. Is that still a waste of energy? Yes, because there are way better things we could do with that energy, like verifying transactions using coins that aren't obsolete i.e. aren't bitcoin. Similarly, they're wasting the user's time here because while yes, the user is doing something by writing an apology, it's still much less valuable than what that user could be doing.
- gpvos 9y ago
  They get quite a bit of product feedback, which is beneficial.
jwilk 9y ago
Here's a copy that can be read without JS enabled: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/24ca461fd6d32f17a5ac07b91acfddf3 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/24ca461fd6d32f17a5ac07b91a...
- Ndymium 9y ago
  For those using something like uMatrix, it seems the site's JavaScript crashes if you don't load Stripe's JavaScript too. Enabling that makes the site render.
PeOe 9y ago
Shouldn't you focus on those guys who will have a commercial benefit out of such a service? If they have a benefit, they will pay - because they earn somehow money out of it. Asking private persons will lead into goodwill purchases - which I'm not thinking that this is scaleable...
- wastedhours 9y ago
  I can see this working well for content curation of articles for businesses. Reading individually might be free, but then if you want a daily dose of industry related news hand picked and cross linked, then you pay a subscription.
xelxebar 9y ago
This URL only loads a blank white page for me. It's probably because I keep JS disabled, but I really wish sites would degrade more sensibly. If you absolutely require JS for the content, I understand, but please display some minimal page that explains things. Even if it was just ugly plain text, I'd be much more willing to enable JS for you :)
pjc50 9y ago
Unsolved, difficult problems of micropayments: - pay before viewing: how do you know that the thing you're paying for is the thing that you're expecting? What if it's a rickroll or goatse? - so do you give refunds a la steam? - pay and adverts: double-dipping is very annoying - pay and adverts: how do you know who you're paying? A page appears with a micropayment request, but how do you know you've not just paid the advertiser to view their ad? - pay and frame: can you have multiple payees per displayed page? (this has good and bad ideas) - pay and popups: it's going to be like those notification or app install modals, yet another annoyance for people to bounce off - pay limits: contactless has a £30 limit here. Would you have the same payment system suitable for $.01 payments and $1000 payments? How easy is it to trick people into paying over the odds (see refunds)? - pay and censors: who's excluded from the payment system? Why? Essentially the problem with micropayments is microscams.
- reificator 9y ago
  - Can you blacklist specific providers?
- vlehto 9y ago
  I think the only real problem there is the "how do you know who you're paying?" part. Everything else would be solved or effectively ignored with the following: I send you 10$ somehow, you send me email with ten hashes. Each hash worth a dollar. I pay to alex by cut and paste on a webpage (here's the catch, maybe It's a scam!) Alex has registered as content producer to your service. Alex immediately sends the hash with his on handle crypted into one neat package, to your servers. As soon as it lands, you add the dollar to his account. The particular hash is now rendered useless for the rest of history. You send "valid transaction" message to Alex. Alex then lets me to comment his excellent blog post. What am I missing? If it was that easy, it would have been done.
  - pjc50 9y ago
    > If it was that easy, it would have been done. Part 2: business model problems! - getting money into the system is plagued by usual fraud problems of card TX for pure digital goods - nobody wants to build a federated system; everyone wants to build a Play/Apple/Steam store where they take 30% - winner-take-all effects are strong - Play store et al already exist, why not use that? - Free substitute goods are just a click away - Consumers will pirate anything no matter how cheap the original is - No real consumer demand for micropayments => lemma from previous 3 items: market for online goods is efficient enough to drive all marginal prices to zero - existing problem of the play store letting your kid spend all the money - friction: it would be great if you didn't have to repeatedly approve things, such as a micropayment for every page of a webcomic archive. But blanket approval lets bad actors drain the jar or inattentive users waste it and then feel conned - first most obvious model for making this work is porn, which is inevitably blacklisted by the payment processors, has a worse environment for fraud/chargebacks, and is toxic to VCs (see Patreon and even Craigslist) - Internet has actually killed previously working micropayment systems such as Minitel, paid ringtones (anyone remember the dark era of Crazy Frog?); surviving ones like premium SMS and phone have a scammy, seedy feel. - accounting requirements: do you have to pay VAT on that micropayment? do you have to declare it? Is it a federal offence to sell something to an Iranian or North Korean for one cent? Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630862 Slashdot (2003): https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/07/22/138257/whatever-happened-to-micropayments https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/07/22/138257/whatever-hap... HBR: https://hbr.org/2010/02/why-i-hate-micropayments.html https://hbr.org/2010/02/why-i-hate-micropayments.html
raresp 9y ago
You should force non-paying customers to refer a friend or to share the page with a SEO optimized title on their facebook/twitter profile. But you shouldn't remove the skip payment option until you have a big user base.
- RepressedEmu 9y ago
  Adding a sharing feature to get past the payment is an interesting thought. Instead of subjecting your users to ads you make them advertise to others on your behalf. Its definitely a good move for them if they are a young company.
dredmorbius 9y ago
Treat information as the public good it is. Pay those who create it. Allow free access to public information. The entire advertising market worldwide is $600 billion, which works out to roughly $600 per man, woman, and child among the 1 billion inhabitants of the US, EU, Japan, CA, AU, and NZ. (Or OECD states, if you prefer, or G-7.) Total media spend (print) is on the order of $200/year. Cable + broadband on the order of $1500 - $3000 per year (content and connectivity). Seems to me there's some streamlining potential possible. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...
omk 9y ago
> Around 8% of users who could have used the apology flow converted into paying customers. Given enough time, game theory is bound to kick in and gaming the system becomes a norm reducing the conversion rate. That is what you get with rational decision makers combined with enough automation.
Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
I found it really difficult to take this article seriously. >Kapwing is an online video and GIF meme generator It adds bars of text to the top and/or bottom of a gif. This product is worth $0. Probably less.
- tyingq 9y ago
  "Around 8% of users who could have used the apology flow converted into paying customers" One man's trash...
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    I'd like proof or actual numbers before just believing this. What if 8% of users is a few people?
- soared 9y ago
  It would take me ~5 hours to manually add text to a video or gif. I'd need to download (or buy) software, install it, learn to use it, export/convert/etc. This site has significant value.
  - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
    It would take you less than 20 minutes to find and learn the requisite (free) software the first time, then less than 2 minutes each subsequent time. If you grok ffmpeg then you can probably get it down to a dead simple script and 0 time.
    - soared 9y ago
      I don't program and know nothing about video or video software or 'scripts'. My internet is ungodly slow and pc is incredibly old/weak. I don't know what grok or ffmpeg is. The above is not me, but many other users.
      - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
1_player 9y ago
I've had this idea, and this is a good time as any to put it in the wild, since I don't have time to build it: My problem with paywalls/sponsoring/micropayments is that I'm completely fine to pay an entity, say $5 a month. What I am not OK with is supporting all the people I'd like to support, which at $5 a month might total a hundred bucks or more. I have the budget for it, but $5 increments can really get expensive after a while. And if you don't want to support an entity anymore, you'd have to remove their subscription on Paypal or Patreon or on their website or on whatever platform they've decided to use. My "disruptive" idea is composed of two pieces: 1) A budget. I have $50/month I want to give away. No more than that because X reasons. I want this money to be equally divided. Tomorrow I have a better job, so I can budget $200/month, and everybody wins. 2) A browser extension. I click it when I'm visiting a website part of the network and lo, I've subscribed to the entity and at the end of the month part of my budget goes to them. Whenever I visit their site/content the extension reminds me I'm a subscriber, so I get the warm fuzzy feeling I'm supporting them. When I want to unsubscribe I toggle my subscription with a click. EDIT: also, the entity DOES NOT know if a visitor on their website is a subscriber or not. I want to keep the Internet free for everybody, and not split it between paying users and leechers. That's it. Seems to me it's _relatively_ easy to build, and it's miles ahead of all the current micropayment platforms, that are clunky as hell. Flattr Plus seems to have gone towards the same direction, with a big difference: whenever you visit an entity registered with Flattr Plus they'll automatically send some of your money to them to support them. I DO NOT WANT that. I might visit a site, decide it's awful, and don't want to support them. I need to be able to choose. I'd really like to discuss more on this idea, it might be totally bunk but I still think this is potentially disruptive. My email is in my profile.
- infinisil 9y ago
  You might want to check out Brave [1] which does pretty much exactly what you described: > Set up automatic micro-donations. Brave will automatically divide a monthly donation among the top sites you visit. See also their blogpost about it [2] and the FAQ [3]. [1]: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ [2]: https://www.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/ https://www.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/ [3]: https://www.brave.com/faq-payments/ https://www.brave.com/faq-payments/
ungzd 9y ago
Imagine the same implemented in mainstream news media, links to which is always on top here on HN. "I'm too poor to pay non-cancellable monthly subscription to The CNN Times and extremely want to read this exciting article '10 Reasons Why Zuckertrump Is A Horseman Of Apocalypse'".
nikki-9696 9y ago
They skipped paying because they didn't want a small text link that advertises for the service they just used for free? I don't buy any of their excuses. It's not like they couldn't use the service at ALL.

205 points by justswim 9y ago

A clever way to get feedback actually, by incentivizing them for it! I'm actually having this issue right now, we have easy to access feedback forms, but users just don't bother to complain or comment.

kilolima 9y ago

Who cares... site does not load with javascript disabled.

trumpownsyou420 9y ago
kill yourself.
CommentCard 9y ago
It's using react.js, maybe try unfiltering the site before heading to the comment section to tell everyone how much you don't care. This seems like an interesting way to do research on the best ways to convert these users who don't want to pay outright. Maybe selectively show ads to the free users?
KyeRussell 9y ago
Yeah, cool, so like most of the modern Internet then? Accepting JavaScript's prevalence—even given its many many many many many flaws—is something us pragmatists that actually decide to use the Internet to do things decided to do long long ago.
- s17n 9y ago
  Uh huh tell me more about these "things" that you "do". If there's a web app that I want to use, I whitelist it for js. For general browsing, I keep it off. Ironically, this works fine for the same reason that paywalls will never succeed - there is so much content out there that any individual piece of it has essentially no value.
  - Veen 9y ago
    > there is so much content out there that any individual piece of it has essentially no value Zero multiplied by anything is zero, so if all individual pieces of content are worthless, so is content as a whole. But of course that's not true because content isn't fungible. There's an infinity of content, but, unless you think a cat meme listicle is equivalent to War and Peace, it doesn't matter. The best content will always be worth paying for to people who care about what they put into their brain.
    - s17n 9y ago
      I'm talking about browsing HN - nothing getting posted here is equivalent to War and Peace. If a particular link doesn't work because of javascript, I can just go on to the next one.
- Lammy 9y ago
  The page is text and static images and it's kind of absurd for it not to render without JS enabled even in 2017.
jlgaddis 9y ago
> site does not load with javascript disabled Who cares?
- jabot 9y ago
  Anyone on mobile? Anyone who doesn't want a cryptocurrency miner in his browser? Anyone security conscious?
superkuh 9y ago
I agree. I'll JS whitelist the domain itself in good faith but when it's more than 4 CDN and framework domains deep, all loading each other in serially, I'm just going to close the tab. It's even worse when all they're trying to do is show simple text.
- NoGravitas 9y ago
  Yeah. I run uBlock Origin in "medium mode", defaulting to blocking third-party resources, but I'm pretty used to enabling them to get sites working. Enabling the most likely domains on this site just didn't do anything, so I'm just not going to bother doing anything more.
Veen 9y ago
It's fine for any website to choose who it wants to serve. I don't imagine most JavaScript-dependent services are sad about losing a fraction of a percent of their potential users. It's not for them in the first place.
CaptSpify 9y ago
Agreed. It's funny to me that someone wants to charge people for their online service, but can't even make a simple web-page fail gracefully. That's a pretty strong signal to me of the quality of their online service

cpncrunch 9y ago

Anyone can afford a dollar. I'm guessing the real reason these people don't pay is because they don't think it's worth paying $1 to generate a meme. IMO I think it makes more sense to put advertising on the main site and fund it that way. If I was a user of this service I'd prefer to have some ads on the site rather than paying $1 for it. I don't feel it makes sense to remove the branded gifs...that's how you will grow your business, and it's not worth removing it because someone is just too cheap to pay. Anyway, it's your business and not mine, so do what you feel is best.

nlawalker 9y ago
>> don't think it's worth paying $1 Key word there is paying. A buck is fine with me, but I don't have a good way to offer it. I'm not giving you my credit card number, email or phone number; I'm not going to spend even 10 seconds filling out a form just for your site; I don't use PayPal; I don't currently authorize you to ever take any more than the buck I want to give you right now; I want a refund if the functionality doesn't work as described. Has anyone made any real progress in solving this problem?
- devdoomari 9y ago
  um... bitcoin? heard like 3 years ago that bitcoin will handle all sorts of micro-transactions... anyone know what happened?
  - cstrat 9y ago
    I haven't used BTC in a long time but last I read transactions take a very long time to process because the blocksize is too small to contain all the transactions that took place. I read (not sure if this is correct) that transaction fees needed to be upwards of $20 to ensure the transaction was included in the next block.
  - SAI_Peregrinus 9y ago
    Bitcoin transactions have something like a $5 average transaction fee. You can offer less but your transaction won't get processed as quickly. Bitcoin is already slow at processing transactions. Disclaimer: I don't use bitcoin. The $5 number is outdated, but from the graphs I could find in a quick search it seemed to be rising consistently.

noncoml 9y ago

Here is my honest brutal “apology”: I wouldn’t pay more than a couple of cents to use your service. If you want to monetize it find a way to allow nano-payments. You are not adding as much value as you think.

duiker101 9y ago
One dollar is something you could afford. And if you can't/don't think it's of enough value then the watermark version is good too for sure. And if you are a content creator that needs lots of them then the 10$\month will be fine. Let users pay with their wallet. Not everyone would know how to do this in some graphics software so there is a value.
- newen 9y ago
  It doesn't matter if I can afford it... I can afford to spend $500 too. Doesn't mean I'm going to spend it on just anything. Making a meme on a website is barely worth the time I spend doing it. The $10 seems reasonable if I make a ton of memes and it's a good website though. The $1 is just ridiculous and they should just take that option out purely because it changes the dynamics as to how you view the website. Charging $1 for a meme is so ridiculous that I think people will look at the $1 and run, while viewing it as a monthly $10 service will be more palatable.
  - deleted 9y ago
    [deleted]
  - whostolemyhat 9y ago
    It's $1 for removing the watermark from the video. The free version still has the watermark.
- thedrbrian 9y ago
  If you’re a content creator you’ll have a stand alone program that’ll do more than add text to a video.
9y ago

justhackedme 9y ago

God this is sad. Startup desperately begging for money and people obliging. Then they create an ad for their product out of it as if it's "some useful goss they researched". I should make a useless startup. So many cheap tactics that people fall head over heels for.

bearbearbear 9y ago

I'm sorry I'm not apologizing for being poor.

s73ver_ 9y ago
Then keep the watermark. But don't feel that just because you're poor that their costs are any different.
- bearbearbear 9y ago
  I didn't ask them to have costs or a website.
  - s73ver_ 9y ago
    And? Your point being? Should the grocery store also give you free food because you didn't ask them to have a store? Again, you being poor sucks. That does not change things for them, however. They still need to make money, and if you don't have the money, then you can go without. You will still live.
    - bearbearbear 9y ago
      > Should the grocery store also give you free food because you didn't ask them to have a store? Yes, that's why I have food stamps.
      - mikestew 9y ago
        I don’t think that you understand how food stamps work.
  - skinnymuch 9y ago
    What? What about any store or company? You didn't ask anyone to have costs. They do. And you need or want to pay for some stuff at some point. What's your point? Seems quite entitled.

jancsika 9y ago

Did you get the permission of the users whose responses you posted?

chipperyman573 9y ago
Legally they're fine because the responses were anonymous and none of the users would reasonably believe that their responses would remain completly private. Ethically (at least in my opinion) is the same, as long as they're kept anonymous and there's nothing personal or private in the responses they can use them for any reason. Especially because they were given in lieu of payment.
- jwilk 9y ago
  Are you saying that expecting any privacy is unreasonable these days?
  - chipperyman573 9y ago
    1. I never said that, please stop putting words in my mouth. 2. In my opinion, posting completely anonymized responses is not a violation of privacy

shash7 9y ago

Don't think of it as asking for 1 dollar. Think like this: Say if you walk up to me irl and ask for a dollar, I'll be like, sure here's your change and open up my wallet. Online, asking for one dollar is too much mental overhead. Its not like people don't want to pay, but you need to make it easy for them to pay you. Personally, I would stick with ad revenue instead of 1 dollar payments.

Retra 9y ago
Online, asking for $1 is asking for someone's credit card info.
- mirimir 9y ago
  Right, and Mirimir has no credit cards :( I used to argue for Bitcoin, but at $6K that's crazy. However, a EZPass-like token funded with cards, cryptocurrencies, money in the mail, etc. That would be cool.
  - thisacctforreal 9y ago
    Being pedantic; the fluctuation is what’s crazy, if they started at $6k it’d be no problem because you’d just think in terms of thousandths of BTC (or even satoshis) instead of whole coins.
    - mirimir 9y ago
      The problem is the transaction fees needed for timely confirmation.
  - Cyphase 9y ago
    > I used to argue for Bitcoin, but at $6K that's crazy. Well, Bitcoin may not be good for micropayments, but that's not the reason; you don't have to have integer numbers of bitcoin, you can have 0.00016666 bitcoins (~$1 at $6k/BTC).
    - 9y ago

mango1900 9y ago

This might get downvoted, but let me play devils advocate... the $1 is too cheap. You don’t value my time if you’re making me whip out my credit card and go through the painful process of checking out for transacting only a dollar from me. You’re also extremely downplaying the value of your product. if it was only worth a dollar, you would likely not be building a startup around it :) Most people don’t know how much something is worth. Try not to lower price, rather, increase value. Under the sad faces, I’d change the messaging. Its generally understood (even by the layperson) that the true cost of technology is very low. What this really costs, and this is true, is the time-value of your development team (and associated market salary). “It takes real people to build and maintain this” might be more effective messaging. All that said, this does seem like an interesting way to gather user feedback. Good luck!

bartread 9y ago
I'm inclined to agree with this. Like you say, increase the price and offer more value: there's a $10 subscription, but how about a $10 one-off, which allows me to create as many videos as I like for the next two weeks, or next month? I'm sure there are probably other - perhaps more interesting/creative - ways you could offer more value if you spent some time thinking about it. Also, offering payment options that don't require me to fill in a form with my credit card details for yet another frigging website. I hate to recommend them in some ways - because they've caused me aggro so many times with transactions larger than a few hundred quid - but PayPal might be a good option here.
deadmetheny 9y ago
>$1 is too cheap The product is a meme maker, and that $1 gets a watermark removed on said meme. That isn't even remotely worth $1 for a single instance. There's plenty of free software that can do the same thing, albeit less streamlined. Definitely a clever way to solicit feedback, though.

peterburkimsher 9y ago

I like this idea of avoiding a paywall with a reason. I read many articles from The Guardian, who use a banner ad to promote their premium subscriptions. Due to my unstable life, I can't commit to regular payments from one bank account in one country for more than a couple of months at the longest. The Guardian and many other news sites have entire sections dedicated to Bitcoin. But they don't accept it as a payment method. I emailed their customer feedback, and was pleasantly surprised at the encouraging reply. Their management will be discussing whether to accept Bitcoin as a payment method. If the news websites start accepting Bitcoin, they'll be more likely to post less sensational articles about it, and the value proposition to the end user becomes more clear (remove ads). The fact that Bitcoin payments aren't traceable encourages factual articles instead of promoting articles that indulge the political opinions of the people funding the news agency.

shmerl 9y ago

As usual, greed slows down progress.

vortico 9y ago
But why should the creator care about progress in this particular area of the web if he's not getting paid?
bartread 9y ago
Greed? It's a startup posting on Hacker News about how they're trying to build a business, which is right in the bullseye of the Hacker News schtick as far as I can tell. Since when has it been greedy to try and make a living, even doing something random and frivolous? The world needs random and frivolous things. Regardless, I thought it was an interesting experiment.
- shmerl 9y ago
  Wrong article. I was posting in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15591020 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15591020 but misplaced the comment.
  - bartread 9y ago
    Haha - classic. I've done that before too.

alkonaut 9y ago

If the options were "click here to pay $1" and "click here to pay $0" then I'd happily pay for tons of services and paywalls. If the option is "Click here to pay $0" vs. "Click here to either sign up or do a 5 step one time checkout" then it's not clear, at least not for a service/product I'm unsure about. (Disclaimer: I don't have PayPal or similar - I'm not sure if there exists a single click payment system that I'd be willing to use)

stevefan1999 9y ago

That means you are publicly shaming your "pirating" visitors? That's morally unacceptable!

Angostura 9y ago
Except, I see no mention that anything is made public.
- jwilk 9y ago
  Some of the "apologies" were published in this very article.

underwoodley 9y ago

From an economic point of view, wasting people's time in exchange for a free service is worse than either charging them what the market can bear, or providing a free service. If you charged them, you would benefit. If you didn't charge, the users would benefit. But if you make a demand on their time which doesn't have any benefit for you, both of you are worse off.

jchw 9y ago
This, to me, seems like a strange way of thinking. They're not 'wasting people's time,' they're making a request of them in exchange for a service. Instead of turning them away entirely as a full paywall may have, they got some information or at least amusement out of them, and the user still gets their service. Users benefit either way; the question is whether they have to pay in exchange for it or answer a question in exchange for it. The latter may seem wasteful to you, but clearly it didn't to the owners of that website.
- alphaalpha101 9y ago
  They're wasting time in the same sense that bitcoin is wasting energy: maybe they're technically doing something, but it's still a waste. Bitcoin wastes a lot of energy. Does it technically get used? Sure, it does, it's used to verify transactions. Is that still a waste of energy? Yes, because there are way better things we could do with that energy, like verifying transactions using coins that aren't obsolete i.e. aren't bitcoin. Similarly, they're wasting the user's time here because while yes, the user is doing something by writing an apology, it's still much less valuable than what that user could be doing.
gpvos 9y ago
They get quite a bit of product feedback, which is beneficial.

jwilk 9y ago

Here's a copy that can be read without JS enabled: https://gist.github.com/anonymous/24ca461fd6d32f17a5ac07b91acfddf3 https://gist.github.com/anonymous/24ca461fd6d32f17a5ac07b91a...

Ndymium 9y ago
For those using something like uMatrix, it seems the site's JavaScript crashes if you don't load Stripe's JavaScript too. Enabling that makes the site render.

PeOe 9y ago

Shouldn't you focus on those guys who will have a commercial benefit out of such a service? If they have a benefit, they will pay - because they earn somehow money out of it. Asking private persons will lead into goodwill purchases - which I'm not thinking that this is scaleable...

wastedhours 9y ago
I can see this working well for content curation of articles for businesses. Reading individually might be free, but then if you want a daily dose of industry related news hand picked and cross linked, then you pay a subscription.

xelxebar 9y ago

This URL only loads a blank white page for me. It's probably because I keep JS disabled, but I really wish sites would degrade more sensibly. If you absolutely require JS for the content, I understand, but please display some minimal page that explains things. Even if it was just ugly plain text, I'd be much more willing to enable JS for you :)

pjc50 9y ago

Unsolved, difficult problems of micropayments: - pay before viewing: how do you know that the thing you're paying for is the thing that you're expecting? What if it's a rickroll or goatse? - so do you give refunds a la steam? - pay and adverts: double-dipping is very annoying - pay and adverts: how do you know who you're paying? A page appears with a micropayment request, but how do you know you've not just paid the advertiser to view their ad? - pay and frame: can you have multiple payees per displayed page? (this has good and bad ideas) - pay and popups: it's going to be like those notification or app install modals, yet another annoyance for people to bounce off - pay limits: contactless has a £30 limit here. Would you have the same payment system suitable for $.01 payments and $1000 payments? How easy is it to trick people into paying over the odds (see refunds)? - pay and censors: who's excluded from the payment system? Why? Essentially the problem with micropayments is microscams.

reificator 9y ago
- Can you blacklist specific providers?
vlehto 9y ago
I think the only real problem there is the "how do you know who you're paying?" part. Everything else would be solved or effectively ignored with the following: I send you 10$ somehow, you send me email with ten hashes. Each hash worth a dollar. I pay to alex by cut and paste on a webpage (here's the catch, maybe It's a scam!) Alex has registered as content producer to your service. Alex immediately sends the hash with his on handle crypted into one neat package, to your servers. As soon as it lands, you add the dollar to his account. The particular hash is now rendered useless for the rest of history. You send "valid transaction" message to Alex. Alex then lets me to comment his excellent blog post. What am I missing? If it was that easy, it would have been done.
- pjc50 9y ago
  > If it was that easy, it would have been done. Part 2: business model problems! - getting money into the system is plagued by usual fraud problems of card TX for pure digital goods - nobody wants to build a federated system; everyone wants to build a Play/Apple/Steam store where they take 30% - winner-take-all effects are strong - Play store et al already exist, why not use that? - Free substitute goods are just a click away - Consumers will pirate anything no matter how cheap the original is - No real consumer demand for micropayments => lemma from previous 3 items: market for online goods is efficient enough to drive all marginal prices to zero - existing problem of the play store letting your kid spend all the money - friction: it would be great if you didn't have to repeatedly approve things, such as a micropayment for every page of a webcomic archive. But blanket approval lets bad actors drain the jar or inattentive users waste it and then feel conned - first most obvious model for making this work is porn, which is inevitably blacklisted by the payment processors, has a worse environment for fraud/chargebacks, and is toxic to VCs (see Patreon and even Craigslist) - Internet has actually killed previously working micropayment systems such as Minitel, paid ringtones (anyone remember the dark era of Crazy Frog?); surviving ones like premium SMS and phone have a scammy, seedy feel. - accounting requirements: do you have to pay VAT on that micropayment? do you have to declare it? Is it a federal offence to sell something to an Iranian or North Korean for one cent? Previously on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630862 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=630862 Slashdot (2003): https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/07/22/138257/whatever-happened-to-micropayments https://news.slashdot.org/story/03/07/22/138257/whatever-hap... HBR: https://hbr.org/2010/02/why-i-hate-micropayments.html https://hbr.org/2010/02/why-i-hate-micropayments.html

raresp 9y ago

You should force non-paying customers to refer a friend or to share the page with a SEO optimized title on their facebook/twitter profile. But you shouldn't remove the skip payment option until you have a big user base.

RepressedEmu 9y ago
Adding a sharing feature to get past the payment is an interesting thought. Instead of subjecting your users to ads you make them advertise to others on your behalf. Its definitely a good move for them if they are a young company.

dredmorbius 9y ago

Treat information as the public good it is. Pay those who create it. Allow free access to public information. The entire advertising market worldwide is $600 billion, which works out to roughly $600 per man, woman, and child among the 1 billion inhabitants of the US, EU, Japan, CA, AU, and NZ. (Or OECD states, if you prefer, or G-7.) Total media spend (print) is on the order of $200/year. Cable + broadband on the order of $1500 - $3000 per year (content and connectivity). Seems to me there's some streamlining potential possible. https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modest_proposal_universal_online_media_payment/ https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/1uotb3/a_modes...

omk 9y ago

> Around 8% of users who could have used the apology flow converted into paying customers. Given enough time, game theory is bound to kick in and gaming the system becomes a norm reducing the conversion rate. That is what you get with rational decision makers combined with enough automation.

Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

I found it really difficult to take this article seriously. >Kapwing is an online video and GIF meme generator It adds bars of text to the top and/or bottom of a gif. This product is worth $0. Probably less.

tyingq 9y ago
"Around 8% of users who could have used the apology flow converted into paying customers" One man's trash...
- skinnymuch 9y ago
  I'd like proof or actual numbers before just believing this. What if 8% of users is a few people?
soared 9y ago
It would take me ~5 hours to manually add text to a video or gif. I'd need to download (or buy) software, install it, learn to use it, export/convert/etc. This site has significant value.
- Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago
  It would take you less than 20 minutes to find and learn the requisite (free) software the first time, then less than 2 minutes each subsequent time. If you grok ffmpeg then you can probably get it down to a dead simple script and 0 time.
  - soared 9y ago
    I don't program and know nothing about video or video software or 'scripts'. My internet is ungodly slow and pc is incredibly old/weak. I don't know what grok or ffmpeg is. The above is not me, but many other users.
    - Sir_Cmpwn 9y ago

1_player 9y ago

I've had this idea, and this is a good time as any to put it in the wild, since I don't have time to build it: My problem with paywalls/sponsoring/micropayments is that I'm completely fine to pay an entity, say $5 a month. What I am not OK with is supporting all the people I'd like to support, which at $5 a month might total a hundred bucks or more. I have the budget for it, but $5 increments can really get expensive after a while. And if you don't want to support an entity anymore, you'd have to remove their subscription on Paypal or Patreon or on their website or on whatever platform they've decided to use. My "disruptive" idea is composed of two pieces: 1) A budget. I have $50/month I want to give away. No more than that because X reasons. I want this money to be equally divided. Tomorrow I have a better job, so I can budget $200/month, and everybody wins. 2) A browser extension. I click it when I'm visiting a website part of the network and lo, I've subscribed to the entity and at the end of the month part of my budget goes to them. Whenever I visit their site/content the extension reminds me I'm a subscriber, so I get the warm fuzzy feeling I'm supporting them. When I want to unsubscribe I toggle my subscription with a click. EDIT: also, the entity DOES NOT know if a visitor on their website is a subscriber or not. I want to keep the Internet free for everybody, and not split it between paying users and leechers. That's it. Seems to me it's _relatively_ easy to build, and it's miles ahead of all the current micropayment platforms, that are clunky as hell. Flattr Plus seems to have gone towards the same direction, with a big difference: whenever you visit an entity registered with Flattr Plus they'll automatically send some of your money to them to support them. I DO NOT WANT that. I might visit a site, decide it's awful, and don't want to support them. I need to be able to choose. I'd really like to discuss more on this idea, it might be totally bunk but I still think this is potentially disruptive. My email is in my profile.

infinisil 9y ago
You might want to check out Brave [1] which does pretty much exactly what you described: > Set up automatic micro-donations. Brave will automatically divide a monthly donation among the top sites you visit. See also their blogpost about it [2] and the FAQ [3]. [1]: https://brave.com/ https://brave.com/ [2]: https://www.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/ https://www.brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/ [3]: https://www.brave.com/faq-payments/ https://www.brave.com/faq-payments/

ungzd 9y ago

Imagine the same implemented in mainstream news media, links to which is always on top here on HN. "I'm too poor to pay non-cancellable monthly subscription to The CNN Times and extremely want to read this exciting article '10 Reasons Why Zuckertrump Is A Horseman Of Apocalypse'".

nikki-9696 9y ago

They skipped paying because they didn't want a small text link that advertises for the service they just used for free? I don't buy any of their excuses. It's not like they couldn't use the service at ALL.