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> By this logic, the biggest force in the universe preventing micropayments by linking media to the tawdry, corrupting mechanism of advertising, is Google. No,

> By this logic, the biggest force in the universe preventing micropayments by linking media to the tawdry, corrupting mechanism of advertising, is Google. No, it is users being willing to pay. The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away.

stcredzero 8y ago
The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away. What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? There are YouTube channels which eschew advertisements and get most of their money from Patreon instead. There are other channels that have been demonetized against their will and have gone this route as well. It's workable, and yet, Patreon is far from the lowest friction it could achieve. If there was some party able to make micropayments work, and able to make them not ever work, it would be Google.
- ucaetano 8y ago
  > What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? Again, people don't want to pay for content. Between one website asking you to pay $0.10 to view an article, and another offering it for free but showing ads, people will pick the free one. And Google has been trying: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-contributor-pay-remove-ads https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-co... But it is really hard to convince people to pay, when they can get it for free.
  - paulkon 8y ago
    What if automatic micropayments were made on content request? Directly from the browser.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      Nobody would pay for them. You're not getting to the real problem: if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. And you can't compete with free.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        Nobody would pay for them. I would. if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. There is quite a bit of content for which ads don't work, for which people are only too happy to pay. Reduce the friction for that, and the market would increase. YouTube just slaughtered a bunch of WeedTube channels. Then, there's also GunTube. That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Why isn't someone making something with less friction than Patreon?
        ucaetano 8y ago
        > I would. Sure, 1 user. Maybe even a million users. Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. But nobody will build a system for such a small number of users. > That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries.
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. I think it's still a bit too high in friction. I think there's yet another model possible. Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. A lot of those niches aren't advertiser friendly. Subscription kind of works already. There must be something with lower friction yet. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries. I don't see why micropayments couldn't work on adjusted scales. We already have different prices for things depending on the market. Also, it's a problem that somewhat fixes itself, automatically. A website relevant to low-income rural people outside the 1st world won't be able to charge as much as a 1st world website, but it might well be able to charge enough to greatly benefit the operator anyways.
  - stcredzero 8y ago
    And Google has been trying: Not quite the same thing. It's one thing to be extorted by ads in order to pay. There's a lot of content for which advertisement doesn't work, so there's no extortion to shut off ads. Google doesn't want to facilitate that content for some reason. It wants to squash it.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      > Google doesn't want to facilitate that content for some reason. It wants to squash it. Isn't it providing more tools for easy media subscription? I used it to subscribe to the NYT pretty quickly not too long ago. But hey, if you really believe that there's a significant business opportunity there, go do it!
  - stale2002 8y ago
    You wouldn't pay 10 cents though. You'd pay 1 one thousandth of a cent. I could absolutely image people being willing to pay 1 one thousandth of a cent to read an article.
    - ucaetano 8y ago
      > I could absolutely image people being willing to pay 1 one thousandth of a cent to read an article. Oh, no, way more than that. Take a look at CPMs and ad costs. If your claim was true, and an article had 5 ads, every impression would cost 1/20,000 of a cent, and the CPM would be 5 cents. Actual CPMs are a few dollars per thousand impressions, up to 10+ in developed markets. Which means that in the US, and article with, say, 5 ads would probably require you to pay 5 cents to view that article. Take a look at the articles of ad-paid publications: you're more likely to see 10+ ads per page.
      - stcredzero 8y ago
        I don't think this analysis is valid. There are far more viewer entities than there are advertisers. In the current market, one party is trying to sell eyeballs to advertisers through a middleman. In a micropayment content market, it would be creators selling directly to audience. I think you're making the same kind of mistake when early computer pioneers thought there would be no more than hundreds of computers and no one would ever want one in their home. I both cases, the conceit is that both markets are the same, when in reality, the two markets are entirely different. I'm sure you could have used the same conceit with cable TV to prove that something like YouTube would never work.
        ucaetano 8y ago
        > In a micropayment content market, it would be creators selling directly to audience. It doesn't matter, you'd still need to generate the same level of revenue than the ad-supported business, or even more, to justify the switch. If you didn't, content creators would just stay in the ad-supported business. > I'm sure you could have used the same conceit with cable TV to prove that something like YouTube would never work. That doesn't apply here. We're talking about providing the same content with a different monetization strategy. YT wasn't about the monetization strategy, but about a different type of content.
- the-dude 8y ago
  Blendle tries but is struggling. It does not seem to work, not enough subscribers, unhappy papers ( uhh, advertisers ).
digi_owl 8y ago
Thing us that our easiest way to pay online are credit cards. But credit cards suck for the kind of small payments the web warrants. Also, what is the chance that we would pay and get shown ads anyways? For me it is not ads, full stop, that are the problem. but distracting/disturbing ads unrelated to what i am reading at the time.

stcredzero 8y ago

The vast majority of users are far more ok with being shown ads than paying the equivalent of the cost of the ad to have it go away. What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? There are YouTube channels which eschew advertisements and get most of their money from Patreon instead. There are other channels that have been demonetized against their will and have gone this route as well. It's workable, and yet, Patreon is far from the lowest friction it could achieve. If there was some party able to make micropayments work, and able to make them not ever work, it would be Google.

ucaetano 8y ago
> What if the ad were not in the picture at all, and you had low friction micropayments? Again, people don't want to pay for content. Between one website asking you to pay $0.10 to view an article, and another offering it for free but showing ads, people will pick the free one. And Google has been trying: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-contributor-pay-remove-ads https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/nov/21/google-co... But it is really hard to convince people to pay, when they can get it for free.
- paulkon 8y ago
  What if automatic micropayments were made on content request? Directly from the browser.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    Nobody would pay for them. You're not getting to the real problem: if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. And you can't compete with free.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      Nobody would pay for them. I would. if a user can see an article with ads for free, or pay 10 cents, that user will most likely opt for the free version. There is quite a bit of content for which ads don't work, for which people are only too happy to pay. Reduce the friction for that, and the market would increase. YouTube just slaughtered a bunch of WeedTube channels. Then, there's also GunTube. That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Why isn't someone making something with less friction than Patreon?
      - ucaetano 8y ago
        > I would. Sure, 1 user. Maybe even a million users. Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. But nobody will build a system for such a small number of users. > That content definitely has an audience. That audience definitely is willing to pay! Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries.
        stcredzero 8y ago
        Well, the solution for that exists: subscriptions. I think it's still a bit too high in friction. I think there's yet another model possible. Sure, niche markets always exist. HBO makes money out of subscriptions, The NYT too. If you can find a niche audience that's willing to pay for your content, that makes it a viable business model for you. A lot of those niches aren't advertiser friendly. Subscription kind of works already. There must be something with lower friction yet. But that doesn't scale across the billions of users on the internet. Particularly when you include the 1.5 billion who are not in rich countries. I don't see why micropayments couldn't work on adjusted scales. We already have different prices for things depending on the market. Also, it's a problem that somewhat fixes itself, automatically. A website relevant to low-income rural people outside the 1st world won't be able to charge as much as a 1st world website, but it might well be able to charge enough to greatly benefit the operator anyways.
- stcredzero 8y ago
  And Google has been trying: Not quite the same thing. It's one thing to be extorted by ads in order to pay. There's a lot of content for which advertisement doesn't work, so there's no extortion to shut off ads. Google doesn't want to facilitate that content for some reason. It wants to squash it.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    > Google doesn't want to facilitate that content for some reason. It wants to squash it. Isn't it providing more tools for easy media subscription? I used it to subscribe to the NYT pretty quickly not too long ago. But hey, if you really believe that there's a significant business opportunity there, go do it!
- stale2002 8y ago
  You wouldn't pay 10 cents though. You'd pay 1 one thousandth of a cent. I could absolutely image people being willing to pay 1 one thousandth of a cent to read an article.
  - ucaetano 8y ago
    > I could absolutely image people being willing to pay 1 one thousandth of a cent to read an article. Oh, no, way more than that. Take a look at CPMs and ad costs. If your claim was true, and an article had 5 ads, every impression would cost 1/20,000 of a cent, and the CPM would be 5 cents. Actual CPMs are a few dollars per thousand impressions, up to 10+ in developed markets. Which means that in the US, and article with, say, 5 ads would probably require you to pay 5 cents to view that article. Take a look at the articles of ad-paid publications: you're more likely to see 10+ ads per page.
    - stcredzero 8y ago
      I don't think this analysis is valid. There are far more viewer entities than there are advertisers. In the current market, one party is trying to sell eyeballs to advertisers through a middleman. In a micropayment content market, it would be creators selling directly to audience. I think you're making the same kind of mistake when early computer pioneers thought there would be no more than hundreds of computers and no one would ever want one in their home. I both cases, the conceit is that both markets are the same, when in reality, the two markets are entirely different. I'm sure you could have used the same conceit with cable TV to prove that something like YouTube would never work.
      - ucaetano 8y ago
        > In a micropayment content market, it would be creators selling directly to audience. It doesn't matter, you'd still need to generate the same level of revenue than the ad-supported business, or even more, to justify the switch. If you didn't, content creators would just stay in the ad-supported business. > I'm sure you could have used the same conceit with cable TV to prove that something like YouTube would never work. That doesn't apply here. We're talking about providing the same content with a different monetization strategy. YT wasn't about the monetization strategy, but about a different type of content.
the-dude 8y ago
Blendle tries but is struggling. It does not seem to work, not enough subscribers, unhappy papers ( uhh, advertisers ).

digi_owl 8y ago

Thing us that our easiest way to pay online are credit cards. But credit cards suck for the kind of small payments the web warrants. Also, what is the chance that we would pay and get shown ads anyways? For me it is not ads, full stop, that are the problem. but distracting/disturbing ads unrelated to what i am reading at the time.