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I understand this and I've noticed trends with the news sites going back to a subscription based model due to adblockers. The drawbacks to any model that is pre
by fuscy 9y ago
I understand this and I've noticed trends with the news sites going back to a subscription based model due to adblockers. The drawbacks to any model that is premium is that a large part of the audience is cut off from the content. For the publisher it is ok because that audience is non-monetizing but those readers are essentially cut off from information because they might not be able to afford it. That is similar to the Web 1.0 days when a large part of the world was using shady sites as most US based sites where hidden behind a paywall.
Adblockers and ads actually are a vicious cycle. Adblockers block ads which then requires more ads to be shown to the people without adblockers in order to recoup revenue which forces those people to install more adblockers.
We are already seeing attempts (from shady sites) to mine cryptocurrency in the background. While this might work on desktop, it is killer for the phones and not very usable.
My best bet is for the Web to find their own model of micropayments with freemium content similar to how mobile games are doing it.
- mschuster91 9y ago> My best bet is for the Web to find their own model of micropayments with freemium content similar to how mobile games are doing it. As long as banks make a fortune off of microtransactions despite having no real costs associated with them micropayments in the cent (or, worse, sub-cent) range won't happen. That needs to change.
- marcusjt 9y agoI think Flattr is the most promising way forward as a source of non-ad revenue for websites as it doesn't require explicit user interactions once set up, it just runs in the background, tracks what you consume, and then automagically distributes your allocated funds to the sites in accordance with your consumption.