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There still isn't a good alternative model. Without ads, businesses will put up subscription-only features and paywalls. People hate those too. But we need to

There still isn't a good alternative model. Without ads, businesses will put up subscription-only features and paywalls. People hate those too. But we need to accept the fact that businesses can't make money by giving everything away for free. I'd rather put up with ads than see the internet devolve into paywalls on most sites -- paywalls are more annoying to work around.

kelnos 6y ago
It's already happened. More and more news sites are behind paywalls. A lot of the articles posted on HN are behind paywalls, and half the time I'm too lazy to try archive.is or one of the other paywall workarounds, so I end up doing without. On the other hand, if I'm reading an aggregator like Google News, the interesting thing is that the top article for a particular sub-topic might be from the NYT or another site with a paywall, but if you look down the list you can get a similar article from a non-paywalled site. The cool thing about this is I get exposed to a bunch of random sources, and often they are local news sites. I've looked into subscribing to some sites, but most want north of $10 per month, some in the $20-$30 per month range, and I just don't get that much value out of them to justify paying, especially when I'd end up having to pay for several of them, which would add up to several hundred dollars a month. It's still a real shame that micropayments isn't a thing; I wouldn't have an issue reading the first paragraph or two of an article, and then having to spend something like 5c to 25c to read more. I fully understand why micropayments haven't taken off, but it's a shame nonetheless.
- twblalock 6y ago
  The worst part is that after you subscribe to some of these sites, you still get ads. The New York Times is one example.
contravariant 6y ago
Most of the big webpages are about hosting and sharing content, if we can shift the hosting costs onto the consumer somehow then those applications have no real reason to be a business. Of course some content on e.g. Youtube is now partially funded by ad-revenue but that seems like something that happened more or less accidentally, and it has some undesirable consequences (hence why people are increasingly trying out other revenue streams).
skummetmaelk 6y ago
I would rather pay subscriptions to sites I use than live in the advertising economy.
nicbou 6y ago
For a subset of websites, there is affiliate marketing. I live pretty well from it despite having a fairly small amount of traffic. One size doesn't fit all though

kelnos 6y ago

It's already happened. More and more news sites are behind paywalls. A lot of the articles posted on HN are behind paywalls, and half the time I'm too lazy to try archive.is or one of the other paywall workarounds, so I end up doing without. On the other hand, if I'm reading an aggregator like Google News, the interesting thing is that the top article for a particular sub-topic might be from the NYT or another site with a paywall, but if you look down the list you can get a similar article from a non-paywalled site. The cool thing about this is I get exposed to a bunch of random sources, and often they are local news sites. I've looked into subscribing to some sites, but most want north of $10 per month, some in the $20-$30 per month range, and I just don't get that much value out of them to justify paying, especially when I'd end up having to pay for several of them, which would add up to several hundred dollars a month. It's still a real shame that micropayments isn't a thing; I wouldn't have an issue reading the first paragraph or two of an article, and then having to spend something like 5c to 25c to read more. I fully understand why micropayments haven't taken off, but it's a shame nonetheless.

twblalock 6y ago
The worst part is that after you subscribe to some of these sites, you still get ads. The New York Times is one example.

contravariant 6y ago

Most of the big webpages are about hosting and sharing content, if we can shift the hosting costs onto the consumer somehow then those applications have no real reason to be a business. Of course some content on e.g. Youtube is now partially funded by ad-revenue but that seems like something that happened more or less accidentally, and it has some undesirable consequences (hence why people are increasingly trying out other revenue streams).

skummetmaelk 6y ago

I would rather pay subscriptions to sites I use than live in the advertising economy.

nicbou 6y ago

For a subset of websites, there is affiliate marketing. I live pretty well from it despite having a fairly small amount of traffic. One size doesn't fit all though