They are a thing in gaming. There are companies that will handle the micropayments for you as an indie or small developer. The overhead costs are high so the $0

They are a thing in gaming. There are companies that will handle the micropayments for you as an indie or small developer. The overhead costs are high so the $0.01 will become $0.007 or sth. Importantly, those companies act as merchant of record which makes accounting much simpler for the developer. I m not sure why this model is not being adopted by blogs , i guess it's because those companies don't want to go into the content moderation minefield. It's all fun when coins are paid for virtual sheep, but if people start being activists with the micropayments vendor it's a really bad I don't think Ads are a bad model for content monetizing, they have been the dominant way to monetize newspapers since forever. HN's constant preaching against advertising is illogical, and discourages people (willfully?) from creating more ethical , better forms of advertising.