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Netwerk24 does that in South Africa. They bundled 11 Afrikaans magazines and 35 newspapers under 1 account. And you pay R99 per month for access. (About 7 USD)

Netwerk24 does that in South Africa. They bundled 11 Afrikaans magazines and 35 newspapers under 1 account. And you pay R99 per month for access. (About 7 USD) Not a bad price, but I don't give a shit about all of those newspapers and magazines. I just want 1 or 2 and I don't want to pay for all of them. My proposed solution is very similar to the old print days. You used to just buy a single copy of a newspaper. On an adhoc basis, depending on whether or not any of the headlines caught your attention. You didn't buy a single article, nor did you subscribe to multiple newspapers. (you could, but I don't think many people subscribed to multiple) So here is my solution for a digital version of this: - You have an account with a digital news agency (or group) - You buy bundles of articles. E.g $1 for 20 articles. (or whatever price is appropriate) - Everyone has access to the website, but you can just see the headlines/opening paragraph. - If you are interested, you can use one of your article credits to 'unlock' a specific article and read it in full. - Once you have 'unlocked' a specific article you will always have access to it, and your credit for that 1 article is used up This way you don't have to bother with microtransactions, and also you don't have to bother with paying for a whole bunch of stuff you don't want. What do you guys think?

wink 8y ago
So basically the model is exactly as you want it, but the price doesn't work. If I was keen on news I'd say 7 USD sounds a lot better to me than 10. Not sure I would pay 10. But also not sure I'd take the offer at 5. It's really hard to price those correctly for the readers. There were times I subscribed to a print computer mag, which was ~5 EUR per month - but I read it cover to cover - wehen I stopped doing that, I stopped my subscription. I do like your model - but I'm not sure it would work out. Maybe the people who pay 7 USD only read ~20 articles, so you'd only get 3 articles for your 1 USD. I guess I'd still be much more likely to set up a subscription of 1-2 per month and get a low number of free articles than pay more for "I won't use it anyway". Edit: Everyone's free to tell me I'm cheap (living in Germany and not in ZA, so I guess the 7 USD per month are more palpable to me) - but it's a matter of worth. If I don't want those 2 coffees per month enough (for 7 USD) I also won't buy them, simple as that.

wink 8y ago

So basically the model is exactly as you want it, but the price doesn't work. If I was keen on news I'd say 7 USD sounds a lot better to me than 10. Not sure I would pay 10. But also not sure I'd take the offer at 5. It's really hard to price those correctly for the readers. There were times I subscribed to a print computer mag, which was ~5 EUR per month - but I read it cover to cover - wehen I stopped doing that, I stopped my subscription. I do like your model - but I'm not sure it would work out. Maybe the people who pay 7 USD only read ~20 articles, so you'd only get 3 articles for your 1 USD. I guess I'd still be much more likely to set up a subscription of 1-2 per month and get a low number of free articles than pay more for "I won't use it anyway". Edit: Everyone's free to tell me I'm cheap (living in Germany and not in ZA, so I guess the 7 USD per month are more palpable to me) - but it's a matter of worth. If I don't want those 2 coffees per month enough (for 7 USD) I also won't buy them, simple as that.