5 ms·

Charge me per article I want to read. 25 or 50 cents? Make it seamless so I can hit Apple Pay and then read the article. I would do it, and I bet so would man

by dr_ 8y ago

Charge me per article I want to read. 25 or 50 cents? Make it seamless so I can hit Apple Pay and then read the article. I would do it, and I bet so would many others.

AlimJaffer 8y ago
I genuinely don't see many people doing it, at least not enough to make a tangible difference to the papers bottom line. The only answer these days is a subscription service, but I don't want to subscribe to 50+ different ones... be nice if there was a general 'internet' bill included in your ISP that distributed the money according to the sites you visited the most. Though that's a whole tracking/privacy problem once again.
- redfern314 8y ago
  This is similar to the idea mentioned, but again... requires you to be logged in and tracked. I liked the first implementation of it, not sure about the current form. https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta
gizmo385 8y ago
This might have the effect of gating news coverage by income and prevent lower-income people from being able to access news.
- sdhgaiojfsa 8y ago
  In a way that paywalls don't? I doubt it.
nkozyra 8y ago
People have experimented with this and it's not very popular en masse. A workable model might be something akin to a subscription service wherein you get 200 articles a month from WSJ/NYT/Bloomberg/Whoever for $10 and the revenue is distributed equitably after the provider cut.
- martinald 8y ago
  I would definitely pay for this. Economist, WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, FT would cost about $200/month for a full subscription to each. I don't read any of them that much to justify that sort of money, but if it was 10-20 for a bunch of articles across them all a la spotify I'd definitely pay for it. I think most people I know would too. However, they are probably concerned about cannibalising their own subscriptions too much to do it, which sucks.
TACIXAT 8y ago
I want this model too. Unfortunately, credit card processing fees will eat most of that. We need a new payment infrastructure that's low fee and enables small digital purchases.
- Kalium 8y ago
  We may also need people whose thought processes aren't perturbed by stopping to make payments. It's possible that not all transaction costs are captured fully in per-txn fees.
1123581321 8y ago
How about two or three dollars? You need to give them something on top of transaction costs. I actually think a paper might as well charge $10-50 per article because they won’t make anything charging little enough to attract tire-kickers, and above $1 they won’t get many to pay besides people who have a strong interest in the content and people using the company card.
- appleshore 8y ago
  If the NY Times allowed me to register an account, and then billed me in aggregate every month, then I would gladly pay 25 cents to $1 per article. The problem that Lightning network hopefully solves is exactly the system that the media industry needs. And they are so hyper consolidated, it should be viable to create some type of system. Alternatively, maybe Americans need less news and information.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    There we are, tracking users again, the very system the parent wanted to get away from.
  - 1123581321 8y ago
    Why not just get a subscription at that point? NYT basic is $180/year so you are just asking for a discount on that, assuming you would plan to read less than a couple hundred articles a year.
Kalium 8y ago
Pay-per-item is a wonderful business model! It works spectacularly for movies and books and similar. However, one possible wrinkle springs to mind. That is, all the sectors what per-item media payment works well for are long-form. There's an active review and feedback ecosystem around them, allowing consumers to judge quality before paying. This performs the critical function of enabling consumers to de-risk their purchases. Once again, I'm completely sure this is just a personal failing, but I'm struggling to find a way to construct such a system around newspapers. Reviews only work well when the desire form immediate access is low and the time-cost of the review is a small percentage of that of the content being commented upon. Newspaper articles would seem to fail both tests! Please, help me with my failure of imagination and comprehension.
rkho 8y ago
There's a service called Blendle that does this. I used them a little over a year ago.

by dr_ 8y ago

Charge me per article I want to read. 25 or 50 cents? Make it seamless so I can hit Apple Pay and then read the article. I would do it, and I bet so would many others.

AlimJaffer 8y ago

I genuinely don't see many people doing it, at least not enough to make a tangible difference to the papers bottom line. The only answer these days is a subscription service, but I don't want to subscribe to 50+ different ones... be nice if there was a general 'internet' bill included in your ISP that distributed the money according to the sites you visited the most. Though that's a whole tracking/privacy problem once again.

redfern314 8y ago
This is similar to the idea mentioned, but again... requires you to be logged in and tracked. I liked the first implementation of it, not sure about the current form. https://contributor.google.com/v/beta https://contributor.google.com/v/beta

gizmo385 8y ago

This might have the effect of gating news coverage by income and prevent lower-income people from being able to access news.

sdhgaiojfsa 8y ago
In a way that paywalls don't? I doubt it.

nkozyra 8y ago

People have experimented with this and it's not very popular en masse. A workable model might be something akin to a subscription service wherein you get 200 articles a month from WSJ/NYT/Bloomberg/Whoever for $10 and the revenue is distributed equitably after the provider cut.

martinald 8y ago
I would definitely pay for this. Economist, WSJ, NYT, Bloomberg, FT would cost about $200/month for a full subscription to each. I don't read any of them that much to justify that sort of money, but if it was 10-20 for a bunch of articles across them all a la spotify I'd definitely pay for it. I think most people I know would too. However, they are probably concerned about cannibalising their own subscriptions too much to do it, which sucks.

TACIXAT 8y ago

I want this model too. Unfortunately, credit card processing fees will eat most of that. We need a new payment infrastructure that's low fee and enables small digital purchases.

Kalium 8y ago
We may also need people whose thought processes aren't perturbed by stopping to make payments. It's possible that not all transaction costs are captured fully in per-txn fees.

1123581321 8y ago

How about two or three dollars? You need to give them something on top of transaction costs. I actually think a paper might as well charge $10-50 per article because they won’t make anything charging little enough to attract tire-kickers, and above $1 they won’t get many to pay besides people who have a strong interest in the content and people using the company card.

appleshore 8y ago
If the NY Times allowed me to register an account, and then billed me in aggregate every month, then I would gladly pay 25 cents to $1 per article. The problem that Lightning network hopefully solves is exactly the system that the media industry needs. And they are so hyper consolidated, it should be viable to create some type of system. Alternatively, maybe Americans need less news and information.
- Kalium 8y ago
  There we are, tracking users again, the very system the parent wanted to get away from.
- 1123581321 8y ago
  Why not just get a subscription at that point? NYT basic is $180/year so you are just asking for a discount on that, assuming you would plan to read less than a couple hundred articles a year.

Kalium 8y ago

Pay-per-item is a wonderful business model! It works spectacularly for movies and books and similar. However, one possible wrinkle springs to mind. That is, all the sectors what per-item media payment works well for are long-form. There's an active review and feedback ecosystem around them, allowing consumers to judge quality before paying. This performs the critical function of enabling consumers to de-risk their purchases. Once again, I'm completely sure this is just a personal failing, but I'm struggling to find a way to construct such a system around newspapers. Reviews only work well when the desire form immediate access is low and the time-cost of the review is a small percentage of that of the content being commented upon. Newspaper articles would seem to fail both tests! Please, help me with my failure of imagination and comprehension.

rkho 8y ago

There's a service called Blendle that does this. I used them a little over a year ago.