5 ms·

I've always wondered why I can't pay some small fee (20 cents? $1?) to read an article. Why it have to be an entire subscription? If I put $20 / month into an a

I've always wondered why I can't pay some small fee (20 cents? $1?) to read an article. Why it have to be an entire subscription? If I put $20 / month into an account and then spend that bit by bit on high quality articles from different sites I'd gladly do that.

Yiin 9mo ago
because payment processors hate small payments and punish accordingly (with flat fee +%)
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  That shouldn't really be a problem if there's an intermediary that takes the payment and distributes it.
  - Freak_NL 9mo ago
    We had a service that did this in the Netherlands (Blendle). They had a lot of the big Dutch media titles on-board. It failed and they pivoted to a crappy subscription service. The model just doesn't work at this point.
    - klez 9mo ago
      Inkl, on the other hand, is still alive and kicking. If you're ok with their selection of sources it's 9.99 per month o 99.99 per year. I still have a pay-per-read subscription, which I prefer to the subscription model, but I'm afraid they don't offer that anymore.
    - wolvoleo 9mo ago
      Yes I know blendle but this was decades ago. In a market that was completely different, where paywalls weren't yet a thing and they would just display ads. It was "ads vs paying a bit". Not really a big incentive. I think in this day and age where most news outlets simply give you a paywall I think this will work just fine. Because now the alternative is just not reading the content (or paying a sub which is ridiculous for a site you view a couple times a month)
      - Marsymars 9mo ago
        Their hope with subscriptions is that there's value to you visiting more than a couple times per month. Anecdotally, this works for me - I pay for a handful of subs, and I don't use any news aggregators or feeds - the sites with subs I pay for cover everything of interest to me.
tonyedgecombe 9mo ago
It would be cheaper for you but not very profitable for them.
- prmoustache 9mo ago
  It really depends, there are so many peoole who just don't want more than a couple subscriptions. The subscriptiin model only favor the giants like netflix, spotify and NYTimes but not necessarily the smaller players.
- wolvoleo 9mo ago
  It's only extra money for them because I'm never ever going to subscribe a monthly sub to a site I read one or two articles a month from. So they're not losing anything from me, only gaining. It's basically free money. Right now I use archive.ph because I can but if I couldn't (if they make it a hard block) I would just ignore links to said outlet. I sub to a few outlets which I read daily. But I couldn't possibly sub to every single outlet I see a link from. And I wouldn't anyway. However if I could click '€0.50 to read this article' then yeah I would if it seemed interesting. Especially real journalism, not reuters copy/paste. And for a regular reader who reads said site daily, it still makes sense to take out a 10-20 bucks a month sub. Still cheaper than paying per read.
g947o 9mo ago
1. You can be sure that most people still won't pay to read the article, so it might not be worth doing at all 2. "Number of subscribers" is a real, meaningful metric used across the industry for various purposes, including informing advertisers and calculating recurring revenue. Your proposal, on the other hand, is somewhat odd and questionable that people probably don't know how to make use of.
afavour 9mo ago
The math doesn’t work out: https://www.cjr.org/opinion/micropayments-subscription-pay-by-article.php https://www.cjr.org/opinion/micropayments-subscription-pay-b...
- ecosystem 9mo ago
  Throwing up hands and saying: internalizing the externalized cost is "ridiculously expensive" is not proof it doesn't work. The examples of the a la carte exercise brands referenced (SoulCycle, etc) are quite ineffective arguments -- those are successful businesses with loyal, high retention users because they provide specific, high value products to the users.
  - afavour 9mo ago
    If you’re looking for concrete examples of why it doesn’t work why not study the various companies that have tried this and failed?

Yiin 9mo ago

because payment processors hate small payments and punish accordingly (with flat fee +%)

wolvoleo 9mo ago
That shouldn't really be a problem if there's an intermediary that takes the payment and distributes it.
- Freak_NL 9mo ago
  We had a service that did this in the Netherlands (Blendle). They had a lot of the big Dutch media titles on-board. It failed and they pivoted to a crappy subscription service. The model just doesn't work at this point.
  - klez 9mo ago
    Inkl, on the other hand, is still alive and kicking. If you're ok with their selection of sources it's 9.99 per month o 99.99 per year. I still have a pay-per-read subscription, which I prefer to the subscription model, but I'm afraid they don't offer that anymore.
  - wolvoleo 9mo ago
    Yes I know blendle but this was decades ago. In a market that was completely different, where paywalls weren't yet a thing and they would just display ads. It was "ads vs paying a bit". Not really a big incentive. I think in this day and age where most news outlets simply give you a paywall I think this will work just fine. Because now the alternative is just not reading the content (or paying a sub which is ridiculous for a site you view a couple times a month)
    - Marsymars 9mo ago
      Their hope with subscriptions is that there's value to you visiting more than a couple times per month. Anecdotally, this works for me - I pay for a handful of subs, and I don't use any news aggregators or feeds - the sites with subs I pay for cover everything of interest to me.

tonyedgecombe 9mo ago

It would be cheaper for you but not very profitable for them.

prmoustache 9mo ago
It really depends, there are so many peoole who just don't want more than a couple subscriptions. The subscriptiin model only favor the giants like netflix, spotify and NYTimes but not necessarily the smaller players.
wolvoleo 9mo ago
It's only extra money for them because I'm never ever going to subscribe a monthly sub to a site I read one or two articles a month from. So they're not losing anything from me, only gaining. It's basically free money. Right now I use archive.ph because I can but if I couldn't (if they make it a hard block) I would just ignore links to said outlet. I sub to a few outlets which I read daily. But I couldn't possibly sub to every single outlet I see a link from. And I wouldn't anyway. However if I could click '€0.50 to read this article' then yeah I would if it seemed interesting. Especially real journalism, not reuters copy/paste. And for a regular reader who reads said site daily, it still makes sense to take out a 10-20 bucks a month sub. Still cheaper than paying per read.

g947o 9mo ago

1. You can be sure that most people still won't pay to read the article, so it might not be worth doing at all 2. "Number of subscribers" is a real, meaningful metric used across the industry for various purposes, including informing advertisers and calculating recurring revenue. Your proposal, on the other hand, is somewhat odd and questionable that people probably don't know how to make use of.

afavour 9mo ago

The math doesn’t work out: https://www.cjr.org/opinion/micropayments-subscription-pay-by-article.php https://www.cjr.org/opinion/micropayments-subscription-pay-b...

ecosystem 9mo ago
Throwing up hands and saying: internalizing the externalized cost is "ridiculously expensive" is not proof it doesn't work. The examples of the a la carte exercise brands referenced (SoulCycle, etc) are quite ineffective arguments -- those are successful businesses with loyal, high retention users because they provide specific, high value products to the users.
- afavour 9mo ago
  If you’re looking for concrete examples of why it doesn’t work why not study the various companies that have tried this and failed?