5 ms·
For 25 cents, I don't think I'd care. If I get burned on five articles at 25 cents each, I'll probably stop reading their stuff though. And that might actually
by eganist 4y ago
For 25 cents, I don't think I'd care.
If I get burned on five articles at 25 cents each, I'll probably stop reading their stuff though. And that might actually provide a usable metric to their editors.
- hackernewds 4y agoThe counterpoint is that this will produce EXTREME clickbaiting
- eganist 4y agoWill it, though? What's the likelihood that people stop visiting because the clickbait is both unrewarding and financially impactful? I guess that's the unanswered question. If the likelihood is zero or closer to it, then yeah, clickbait suddenly directly upticks revenue, but if the likelihood is high enough, it might actually force the tide against clickbaiting.
- towaway15463 4y agoThat’s not the case with other paid products. I’d argue it would reduce click bait since the whole idea of click bait was created as a solution to drive more impressions on a page regardless of the quality of the material. Impressions matter because revenue comes from ads so you don’t give a shit if someone actually reads the article, you just want them to click on it or share it based on the headline. If your main revenue source was being paid by people who wanted to read the full article then you would succeed by creating articles people wanted to read. You have to show a small preview to do this but that’s standard practice now. You could also prorate by number of pages read or number of words if you wanted to be fancy.
- paxys 4y agoThink of the number of links you click on in a regular day. The front page of HN itself contains 30 articles. Browsing a few pages of it at 25c each is already $40+ in costs. Is that something you are willing to spend?
- eganist 4y agoNo. (Also, I'm confused at how you got to the $40+ figure with each article costing $0.25, but alas.) And consequently, I'd just browse less. If anything, I might spend more time outside as a result.
- arcastroe 4y ago"Browsing a few pages". After enough pages, you could end up at any monetary amount.
- towaway15463 4y agoThe signal given by articles that make it to the top of news aggregators would be even stronger if they were all paid content. No one is going to post or upvote something they didn’t like and lost money on. It also sounds like it would be a healthy limit on your media consumption if you’re reading 160 articles per day right now.
- dymk 4y agoThe number of links that involve a paywall on the front page of HN is a handful at the most. Not $40 over a few pages.
- lp0_on_fire 4y agoHow many people do you think will go through the trouble of signing up for an account and giving x publisher their credit card for a 25 cent purchase though?
- towaway15463 4y agoThe general idea with micro transactions is that you have some small number of service providers that you use to pay the individual retailers with. You know like how credit cards work.
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoAnd that’s the real reason micropayments haven’t caught on—there is no universal one-click payment system for the web. Every payment processor requires at least one redirection away from the content at hand. A micropayment transaction needs to be as easy as clicking “Continue {Reading,Watching,Listening}” and the content resumes without skipping a beat.
- towaway15463 4y agoSounds like a solvable problem
- MontyCarloHall 4y agoIndeed, so why doesn’t it exist yet?
- interestica 4y agoI mean Apple and Google have prepared users for it with the mechanism built into apps when someone wants to upgrade to a premium version or add a subscription. I think the lowest I've seen is 99c but a smaller micropayment using the same system/interface is simple.