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On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited artic

by Jun8 7y ago

On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited articles.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago
If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. The NYT has a different business model, and is still partly supported by advertising in the print edition. The digital content pricing race-to-the-bottom is really unfortunate. It's why we have shitty free-to-play mobile games, for example: people won't pay more than a few dollars for a phone game anymore, so a lot of devs have to find other business models to support development.
- digitalsushi 7y ago
  or if not advertising inside products, then it rewards walled gardens to grow - the games, blogs, et al end up inside a subsidiary that collects payment for access to all of it together. and the walls grow.
- wolfgke 7y ago
  > If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. First: In the USA, a cup of coffee might cost 5$; in other countries, it is much cheaper. Second: Every payment you do in the internet leaves a huge data track since there exists no analogue for cash for paying anonymously in the internet. So in particular if you are skeptical of data krakens like Facebook etc., you should be very cautious to pay in the internet. In particular, for each payment in the internet, you do not only pay with money, but also with lots of sensitive data.
- nextlevelwizard 7y ago
  With SV salaries that is easy to justify. Normal people wouldn't pay even $3 for a cup of coffee.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    The popularity of Starbucks suggests otherwise. But if you still don't like the coffee analogy, that's fine. The point is that $5 a month is not a lot of money for the average American. That's much less than the cost of a monthly newspaper subscription, and 20 years ago those were extremely popular.
digitalsushi 7y ago
we make things. we make fullstack websites, we make payment processing widgets. we hook them together. a product no one wants, so it doesn't get purchased. imagine if other hobbyists could so easily duct tape a virtual point-of-sale to their display cases. imagine if a gearhead could put a card reader on their front door, try to get the public to wander in for 5 bucks and watch, ask questions. if she could do that as easily as us web geeks could, she'd try it too. but we're the ones with the free access to try it, so we're pioneering this model of a hobbyist product that few will pay for.
- echelon 7y ago
  The internet I grew up on didn't charge money for IRC, Blogspot, forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow, etc. I'm now in the 1% due to the skills I've learned from free sources, and I pay it forward as much as I can. I have yet to encounter a "premium" medium article that really made me think or change my views. Their auto-Google login, paywall, and other dark patterns are annoying at best. Given their actions and how I value their content, I think Medium is the worst kind of walled garden. The Medium model is hot garbage, and I hope it dies.
  - PhasmaFelis 7y ago
    > The internet I grew up on didn't charge money for IRC, Blogspot, forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow, etc. Most of those things were and are maintained by unpaid volunteers, some of them spending their own money every month to keep the servers on. Which is awesome. I applaud anyone who's willing and able to give to the community like that. But a lot of people now act like it's inherently repugnant to want to be paid for your work, like digital content shouldn't exist unless it's a self-funded hobby. I don't think that's reasonable or realistic. Just to be clear, is it just Medium you don't like, or the entire concept of paying for content? I'm seeing both.
  - bitwize 7y ago
    As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your content. Internet access must be paid for, but content is something to share. Who cares if the people who wrote it get paid?
knolax 7y ago
IMO the NYT deserves $0. Even blogspam is better than the narrative pushing they do.
rmsaksida 7y ago
I have nothing against paying for content (and I do so regularly) but there's no way I'm ever paying for something hosted on Medium. The persistent sharing dickbars, the annoying attempts at getting me to sign up, the ridiculously over-sized header, it all really ticks me off. It's funny how a website that portrays itself as a home for great content consistently displays the utmost disregard for content.

by Jun8 7y ago

On an irrelevant point: do bloggers who use Medium honestly expect people to pay $5/mo to see their content? By comparison NY Times is $1/mo for unlimited articles.

PhasmaFelis 7y ago

If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. The NYT has a different business model, and is still partly supported by advertising in the print edition. The digital content pricing race-to-the-bottom is really unfortunate. It's why we have shitty free-to-play mobile games, for example: people won't pay more than a few dollars for a phone game anymore, so a lot of devs have to find other business models to support development.

digitalsushi 7y ago
or if not advertising inside products, then it rewards walled gardens to grow - the games, blogs, et al end up inside a subsidiary that collects payment for access to all of it together. and the walls grow.
wolfgke 7y ago
> If you believe content is worth paying for at all, the price of a cup of coffee every month seems perfectly reasonable. First: In the USA, a cup of coffee might cost 5$; in other countries, it is much cheaper. Second: Every payment you do in the internet leaves a huge data track since there exists no analogue for cash for paying anonymously in the internet. So in particular if you are skeptical of data krakens like Facebook etc., you should be very cautious to pay in the internet. In particular, for each payment in the internet, you do not only pay with money, but also with lots of sensitive data.
nextlevelwizard 7y ago
With SV salaries that is easy to justify. Normal people wouldn't pay even $3 for a cup of coffee.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  The popularity of Starbucks suggests otherwise. But if you still don't like the coffee analogy, that's fine. The point is that $5 a month is not a lot of money for the average American. That's much less than the cost of a monthly newspaper subscription, and 20 years ago those were extremely popular.

digitalsushi 7y ago

we make things. we make fullstack websites, we make payment processing widgets. we hook them together. a product no one wants, so it doesn't get purchased. imagine if other hobbyists could so easily duct tape a virtual point-of-sale to their display cases. imagine if a gearhead could put a card reader on their front door, try to get the public to wander in for 5 bucks and watch, ask questions. if she could do that as easily as us web geeks could, she'd try it too. but we're the ones with the free access to try it, so we're pioneering this model of a hobbyist product that few will pay for.

echelon 7y ago
The internet I grew up on didn't charge money for IRC, Blogspot, forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow, etc. I'm now in the 1% due to the skills I've learned from free sources, and I pay it forward as much as I can. I have yet to encounter a "premium" medium article that really made me think or change my views. Their auto-Google login, paywall, and other dark patterns are annoying at best. Given their actions and how I value their content, I think Medium is the worst kind of walled garden. The Medium model is hot garbage, and I hope it dies.
- PhasmaFelis 7y ago
  > The internet I grew up on didn't charge money for IRC, Blogspot, forums, mailing lists, Stack Overflow, etc. Most of those things were and are maintained by unpaid volunteers, some of them spending their own money every month to keep the servers on. Which is awesome. I applaud anyone who's willing and able to give to the community like that. But a lot of people now act like it's inherently repugnant to want to be paid for your work, like digital content shouldn't exist unless it's a self-funded hobby. I don't think that's reasonable or realistic. Just to be clear, is it just Medium you don't like, or the entire concept of paying for content? I'm seeing both.
- bitwize 7y ago
  As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your content. Internet access must be paid for, but content is something to share. Who cares if the people who wrote it get paid?

knolax 7y ago

IMO the NYT deserves $0. Even blogspam is better than the narrative pushing they do.

rmsaksida 7y ago

I have nothing against paying for content (and I do so regularly) but there's no way I'm ever paying for something hosted on Medium. The persistent sharing dickbars, the annoying attempts at getting me to sign up, the ridiculously over-sized header, it all really ticks me off. It's funny how a website that portrays itself as a home for great content consistently displays the utmost disregard for content.