21–30 of 610 posts
Maybe a pay per click business model where you get a monthly bill from your IP for your internet activity in websites that require payment is an alternative
You cannot netflixify journalism. It's different to movies or music. Journalism is not art. The online subscription business model doesn't work for journalism, because alternatives are far more easily accessible than print media. News are not unique works, news articles share the same base - things that happened anywhere in the world. Why should I get multiple subscriptions then?
I'd pay money for a Netflix-like service for newspapers. I know it's probably not as good for the newspaper business as the old subscription model, but it's pretty much the only viable model that I can see working.
Me and three friends worked on a similar idea at the YC hackathon a couple weeks ago. You'd pay us $10/month and we'd buy a lot of subscriptions to different newspapers. You'd install our chrome extension and when you came across a paywall, we'd autofill credentials that are just valid for one day. We didn't win but it definitely piqued the interest of the crowd and the judges (Sam, Michael, and Adora). We're not pur…
I'd pay money for a Netflix-like service for newspapers. I know it's probably not as good for the newspaper business as the old subscription model, but it's pretty much the only viable model that I can see working.
Me and three friends worked on a similar idea at the YC hackathon a couple weeks ago. You'd pay us $10/month and we'd buy a lot of subscriptions to different newspapers. You'd install our chrome extension and when you came across a paywall, we'd autofill credentials that are just valid for one day. We didn't win but it definitely piqued the interest of the crowd and the judges (Sam, Michael, and Adora). We're not pur…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The irony of saying that on a popular site that does neither of those things should be lost on no one.
To be fair hn does not operate news as a business but as a cost center that feeds recruitment for talent for both investment and hiring.
One analog of this phenomenon are loss leader products in retail. Loss leaders in grocery stores (sometimes produce or in the case of Costco, hotdogs and soda for $1.50). Loss leaders have been responsible for putting lots of small businesses out of business.
When enormous companies offer products for free, that others charge for, it makes me wonder where it all ends. Many internet companies have been put out of business by free services offered by the bigger guys.
A similar issue is the endless supply of people or businesses willing to take a loss on their product, either because they have VC money, some other revenue source, or because they are just ignorant. Google was able to lose money on YouTube for the better part of a decade, for example.
I once had a thriving business buying items at US postal auctions for resale. But the get rich quick bloggers eventually found out about the auctions and then, for years, an endless supply of clueless suckers just kept showing up and paying above MSRP for things like MacBooks and other high end electronics. Ya, they would lose their shirts, and never come back, but there were always fresh meat each month to do the same thing. So most of us that were actually making money previously, had to move on to other things.
It seems like this phenomenon could become more proliferated as some of these core internet companies get larger and larger.
I'd pay money for a Netflix-like service for newspapers. I know it's probably not as good for the newspaper business as the old subscription model, but it's pretty much the only viable model that I can see working.
Me and three friends worked on a similar idea at the YC hackathon a couple weeks ago. You'd pay us $10/month and we'd buy a lot of subscriptions to different newspapers. You'd install our chrome extension and when you came across a paywall, we'd autofill credentials that are just valid for one day. We didn't win but it definitely piqued the interest of the crowd and the judges (Sam, Michael, and Adora). We're not pur…
I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to understand what people want. The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero articles). Now the pa…
I've had the same gripe with games for years. I stopped paying for Xbox live and World of Warcraft because they're the same - if I only played for a few hours in a month, I've paid over-the-odds. I can't predict in a given month how likely I am to have how many hours, so I end up paying them £0. They could get more money out of me if they had a better PAYG or tiering option.
You can't have it both ways. Either you pay for high quality content or you deal with intrusive ads.
Was Bloomberg making $35 from ads from my 3 visits to their site per month? If not why do they ask me now for $35?
A large percentage of people simply will not pay for website access, no matter how low the price. So you get your money from those who do, who value the service so highly that parting with it would be huge pain point for them, and, so Bloomberg assumes probably after extensive surveys, those who feel that way about their publication, will likely have 35$/month to spare for the privilege.
A standard for micropayment for content needs to evolve. Our relationships to publishers have changed substantially. I would be willing to pay per read from sources like The Guardian, New York Times, The Economist, etc, but I am not frequent enough to want to subscribe. For the citizen who wants to get their information from different sources across the globe and political spectrum, it gets unreasonable to expect sub…
1. Whitelist the site
2. "Nah, journalists should go hungry" - this dismisses the popup and lets you read the article with your blocker intact
3. 5c - read the article ad-free
4. 10c - 1 hour of no-ads
5. 30c - 1 day of no-ads
I've converted to US cents, but even in local currency think these prices are extremely reasonable, and I'd love to see more sites offer similar rates
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The irony of saying that on a popular site that does neither of those things should be lost on no one.
This site has employment ads for YC portfolio companies placed into the feed.
When I go to certain sites like Vox, I see repeated ads for women's clothing (wtf?, I'm a guy) that makeup around 40% of an article AND clickbait to other sites via Taboola.