6 ms·

It's true - charging for something that was once free can be risky, but it isn't always bad as some might believe. I have great respect for businesses that char

It's true - charging for something that was once free can be risky, but it isn't always bad as some might believe. I have great respect for businesses that charge for a service that provides real value - even if it was once free. Often times (especially in the startup world), companies start out offering a free product (operating at a loss) to gain market share. It's not often the best strategy, but in some markets it's one of the few ways to break in and gain traction. Obviously, you can't sustain operating a business that way forever, so you eventually have to make up for it somehow. Unfortunately, a lot of tech companies have (perhaps unintentionally) conditioned consumers to expect software to be free. The terrible consequence is that in response to that pressure, many companies choose ethically-questionable ways to make money when they need to, rather than simply charging a fair and honest price for their product (this includes selling users' data, overwhelming the user experience with ads, in-app purchase shenanigans, etc). Paying fair prices for things we use isn't the most appealing idea in the world, but (in my opinion) we probably need more of it, not less.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago
A similar thing happens in the podcasting space. It's a pity it's still quite inconvenient to make micropayments. If I could make a single click to pay a penny for access to a single article, I imagine I'd do so frequently.
- _bxg1 6y ago
  This is what the Brave browser is attempting to do, with mixed success
  - wpietri 6y ago
    There's also scroll.com, which is more netflix-y: you pay a fixed amount per month and it gets paid out to particpating sites you visit.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
      Too few partners. Doesn't include the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, for instance. I favour the nickel-and-dime approach. I'm sure I'd only need to pay pennies per day to outpay advertisers. (I'm assuming that would be enough to keep these outlets afloat, which might not be the case.)
      - wpietri 6y ago
        I would like to see more partners too, but for me it was enough to get started. I'm not particularly worried about the NYT or the WSJ having enough money. It's the smaller sites that I'm aiming to support by using Scroll.
  - bnjms 6y ago
    Do they have a plugin for Firefox? No way that strategy works without plugins for other browsers. —- I hope they succeed.
- criddell 6y ago
  Google Contributor is one attempt to pay creators and it's not terrible. The big downside is that even though ads are blocked, Google is still tracking you. It would be nice if there was somebody other than Google running the program.
- 1123581321 6y ago
  You would need to pay quite a bit more to make this viable for most publications. The ballpark formula is the issue price divided by the number of articles the average reader wants to read enough to pay anything. For example, a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them. A more realistic price might be $1-2/article since the median reader won’t be that interested. Pricing schemes that increase the total reading cost on a log curve can be imagined. Of course we dream of a micropayments system fluid enough that people start consuming 10-100x the content so the price per piece can go down accordingly, but that is unlikely since there isn’t that much free time. A first mover might accumulate a lot of new readers, but that would eventually even out.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    I'm thinking of what happens when HackerNews links to a New York Times article. People hit the paywall, so someone posts a workaround. NYT get $0. If there were an extremely convenient way to pay a few pennies for access (a price low enough that I wouldn't think twice), they'd be making something, at least. I'm not about to go through the hassle and cost of subscribing for a month, to access a single article, and neither is anyone else here. I understand that this 'one shot' model isn't necessarily representative of how their website is generally used, of course. > a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them. For a physical copy. Disregarding current promotional prices, The Guardian charge £12/month for a digital subscription. New York Times is £8 for 4 weeks. Not sure how many articles the typical reader gets through though, or how that should inform our thinking here.
  - user5994461 6y ago
    The price needs to be at or below $0.09 for people to just unlock the news and read on, no thinking. An online newspapers might make $3 per thousand views, plastering ads everywhere and maybe videos. That means they survive with way less than 1 penny per view. They have no excuse to try to charge orders of magnitude more.
    - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
- cshenoy 6y ago
  I'm pretty sure this is what Blendle[0] is doing - pay per article. I've been using it for a year and ended up subscribing to a few of the publications. 0. https://blendle.com https://blendle.com
throwaway3999 6y ago
There's a common theme on HN that it's all the fault of consumers for wanting free stuff. The truth is, budgets are limited, and if you start charging for stuff you will soon find out how much consumers actually value it - with respect with other stuff they can buy. I'm not talking about the average HN user making six figures in a cushy software job - of course you'd pay for a product like Gmail. But think about most people who don't care that much about technology, to whom it's just a tool and not an art, a craft or a hobby. Do you really think your product is that valuable? Do you really think people are willing to buy your content - enough that you can stay afloat? It's not that consumers want free stuff, it's just that most people do not have extra money laying around. I'll also add that "charging a fair price" has never deterred companies from engaging in unethical and privacy-violating practices in addition to taking your money. See: Microsoft, Amazon, etc.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  I imagine people probably would pay for gmail if they didn't get a free account through their ISP. it wasn't too long ago that email was either a paid service or bundled with an internet connection. I don't get the vibe that HN thinks the current state of affairs is completely the fault of the customers. it's a two way street. companies offer free services either at a loss or supported by ads or data mining. once people have a free option, it takes a lot of value add to get them to actually pay for a competing solution.
- dperfect 6y ago
  I'm not faulting consumers for wanting free stuff. If anything, it's a symptom of companies (and investors) putting too much value in vanity metrics and expecting that it will be easy to transition to revenue. I've seen it first-hand: startups intentionally forgoing revenue so they can be measured by the stick of imaginary future profits correlated with their free product's success. Then when investors finally do start asking to see real returns, it's a scramble to find something that doesn't involve charging their current user base (because of course no one wants to pay for something that has been free previously). That's when the "creative" money-making ideas start getting real consideration. In effect, those actions end up communicating to the public that software is free when it really isn't. It gives the impression that there isn't a cost associated with developing and maintaining software, when really it might just be funded temporarily by investors with deep pockets and high expectations, or supported by other revenue sources that the end user would not agree to in full transparency.
_bxg1 6y ago
I also don't think many tech companies would be mistaken for "something like Mom". There's a fundamental thing about creature-comforts like food and coffee that would make this situation more emotional.
ProAm 6y ago
> Unfortunately, a lot of tech companies have (perhaps unintentionally) conditioned consumers to expect software to be free I think Apple started this movement with the App Store and the .99 cent app. I think it coincided with the shift from on-prem software to cloud, but that really shifted what people can charge for software. We've seen a bit of a shift back the last ~5 years maybe? But I still think it the App store started the current epoch.
- WalterBright 6y ago
  It was the internet that made software free, starting with the browser, and continuing with the adoption of Linux with its free tools.
  - tonyedgecombe 6y ago
    Yes, it's been a long term trend. Prices tend to decline towards their marginal cost. In the case of software this is close to zero. Hence companies like MicroSoft are shifting towards services.

MaxBarraclough 6y ago

A similar thing happens in the podcasting space. It's a pity it's still quite inconvenient to make micropayments. If I could make a single click to pay a penny for access to a single article, I imagine I'd do so frequently.

_bxg1 6y ago
This is what the Brave browser is attempting to do, with mixed success
- wpietri 6y ago
  There's also scroll.com, which is more netflix-y: you pay a fixed amount per month and it gets paid out to particpating sites you visit.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
    Too few partners. Doesn't include the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times, for instance. I favour the nickel-and-dime approach. I'm sure I'd only need to pay pennies per day to outpay advertisers. (I'm assuming that would be enough to keep these outlets afloat, which might not be the case.)
    - wpietri 6y ago
      I would like to see more partners too, but for me it was enough to get started. I'm not particularly worried about the NYT or the WSJ having enough money. It's the smaller sites that I'm aiming to support by using Scroll.
- bnjms 6y ago
  Do they have a plugin for Firefox? No way that strategy works without plugins for other browsers. —- I hope they succeed.
criddell 6y ago
Google Contributor is one attempt to pay creators and it's not terrible. The big downside is that even though ads are blocked, Google is still tracking you. It would be nice if there was somebody other than Google running the program.
1123581321 6y ago
You would need to pay quite a bit more to make this viable for most publications. The ballpark formula is the issue price divided by the number of articles the average reader wants to read enough to pay anything. For example, a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them. A more realistic price might be $1-2/article since the median reader won’t be that interested. Pricing schemes that increase the total reading cost on a log curve can be imagined. Of course we dream of a micropayments system fluid enough that people start consuming 10-100x the content so the price per piece can go down accordingly, but that is unlikely since there isn’t that much free time. A first mover might accumulate a lot of new readers, but that would eventually even out.
- MaxBarraclough 6y ago
  I'm thinking of what happens when HackerNews links to a New York Times article. People hit the paywall, so someone posts a workaround. NYT get $0. If there were an extremely convenient way to pay a few pennies for access (a price low enough that I wouldn't think twice), they'd be making something, at least. I'm not about to go through the hassle and cost of subscribing for a month, to access a single article, and neither is anyone else here. I understand that this 'one shot' model isn't necessarily representative of how their website is generally used, of course. > a WSJ is $4, so if readers wanted to read ten articles, they should charge 40-50 cents for them. For a physical copy. Disregarding current promotional prices, The Guardian charge £12/month for a digital subscription. New York Times is £8 for 4 weeks. Not sure how many articles the typical reader gets through though, or how that should inform our thinking here.
- user5994461 6y ago
  The price needs to be at or below $0.09 for people to just unlock the news and read on, no thinking. An online newspapers might make $3 per thousand views, plastering ads everywhere and maybe videos. That means they survive with way less than 1 penny per view. They have no excuse to try to charge orders of magnitude more.
  - MaxBarraclough 6y ago
cshenoy 6y ago
I'm pretty sure this is what Blendle[0] is doing - pay per article. I've been using it for a year and ended up subscribing to a few of the publications. 0. https://blendle.com https://blendle.com

throwaway3999 6y ago

There's a common theme on HN that it's all the fault of consumers for wanting free stuff. The truth is, budgets are limited, and if you start charging for stuff you will soon find out how much consumers actually value it - with respect with other stuff they can buy. I'm not talking about the average HN user making six figures in a cushy software job - of course you'd pay for a product like Gmail. But think about most people who don't care that much about technology, to whom it's just a tool and not an art, a craft or a hobby. Do you really think your product is that valuable? Do you really think people are willing to buy your content - enough that you can stay afloat? It's not that consumers want free stuff, it's just that most people do not have extra money laying around. I'll also add that "charging a fair price" has never deterred companies from engaging in unethical and privacy-violating practices in addition to taking your money. See: Microsoft, Amazon, etc.

leetcrew 6y ago
I imagine people probably would pay for gmail if they didn't get a free account through their ISP. it wasn't too long ago that email was either a paid service or bundled with an internet connection. I don't get the vibe that HN thinks the current state of affairs is completely the fault of the customers. it's a two way street. companies offer free services either at a loss or supported by ads or data mining. once people have a free option, it takes a lot of value add to get them to actually pay for a competing solution.
dperfect 6y ago
I'm not faulting consumers for wanting free stuff. If anything, it's a symptom of companies (and investors) putting too much value in vanity metrics and expecting that it will be easy to transition to revenue. I've seen it first-hand: startups intentionally forgoing revenue so they can be measured by the stick of imaginary future profits correlated with their free product's success. Then when investors finally do start asking to see real returns, it's a scramble to find something that doesn't involve charging their current user base (because of course no one wants to pay for something that has been free previously). That's when the "creative" money-making ideas start getting real consideration. In effect, those actions end up communicating to the public that software is free when it really isn't. It gives the impression that there isn't a cost associated with developing and maintaining software, when really it might just be funded temporarily by investors with deep pockets and high expectations, or supported by other revenue sources that the end user would not agree to in full transparency.

_bxg1 6y ago

I also don't think many tech companies would be mistaken for "something like Mom". There's a fundamental thing about creature-comforts like food and coffee that would make this situation more emotional.

ProAm 6y ago

> Unfortunately, a lot of tech companies have (perhaps unintentionally) conditioned consumers to expect software to be free I think Apple started this movement with the App Store and the .99 cent app. I think it coincided with the shift from on-prem software to cloud, but that really shifted what people can charge for software. We've seen a bit of a shift back the last ~5 years maybe? But I still think it the App store started the current epoch.

WalterBright 6y ago
It was the internet that made software free, starting with the browser, and continuing with the adoption of Linux with its free tools.
- tonyedgecombe 6y ago
  Yes, it's been a long term trend. Prices tend to decline towards their marginal cost. In the case of software this is close to zero. Hence companies like MicroSoft are shifting towards services.