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Welcome to the ad-free internet

economist.com

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Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#31

Post by fastest963 »

littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

This is a space that my company operates in and we will hopefully provide this service in the future. First, publishers want more than what consumers are willing to pay per article, the credit card companies charge too much (even with special micro pricing we've negotiated) and no one has a market big enough to reasonably get $xx per month into a wallet from a massive audience. Google had tried something similar with Google Contributor but has shut it down. There was also Scroll that recently got bought by Twitter that did a wallet-type of deal though it was more complicated than a flat rate per article.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#32

Post by cwillu »

willwinger wrote: post #15
littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

All business inherently know that the most difficult thing is to get a customer to open their wallet. A subscription commitment is far more valuable than an impulsive/interest driven one time payment

Because all customers know that the moment you open your wallet, you're marked as a sucker and there will be no end to the appeals to repeat the mistake.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#34

Post by hedora »

littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

Apple News Plus is exactly what you describe.

The main problem (and reason I cancelled) is that is doesn’t disincentivize clickbait.

If you could curate the homepage to only include feeds of publications you want to pay, then the incentive would be to create a good stream of articles.

As it is, I got sick of clickbait from a few big publications, so their fucking clickbait headlines showed up, but grayed out with a notice that I’d blocked them.

Also, the recommendation system recommends exponentially more clickbait if you click on a few clickbait articles, then it goes into a spiral of garbage.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#35

Post by syndicatedjelly »

Buttons840 wrote: post #17
willwinger wrote: post #10

A 'path to profit' is the time tested lifeline of any enterprise. However this is never highlighted as it doesn't bode well with the general social psyche of humans. For last 20 years, tech enabled startups, chose 'postpone profit' strategy adopting 'free to use' or 'ad supported' approach helped by raising high capital to build moats around the target market. Now this trend can be either seen as a moment where the m…

An ironic thing is that companies that choose to postpone profits will find that when the time comes to charge for profit, they will have burned all good will, and people might finally be coerced to pay, but they'll pay any other company.

It’s so stupid because there already is a playbook for being profitable and still giving your product away for free. It’s the free trial. Hey, we want to earn your trust, so here’s a free month of the service. If you like us, great! Here’s the price at the end. Otherwise no hard feelings.

Instead, the playbook now is:

WE ARE FREE. YES, FREE AS IN NOTHINGBURGER DOLLARS. WE ARE BETTER THAN FREE! WE WILL PROMISE YOU ANYTHING YOU WANT! PUT ALL YOUR INFORMATION HERE AND WE PROMISE TO MAKE YOU FAMOUS AND RICH!

lol jk gimme that data. Also you’re locked in/addicted to our platform. Give us your money.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#36

Post by solardev »

littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

Google actually tried this... at least twice, I think?

In 2011, they partnered with some publishers to offer "One Pass", a pass-through billing system that also had an option for pay-per-article: https://www.electronicpaymentsinternational.com/news/google-...

Then, separately in 2012 they tried to launch "Google Wallet for content", offering publishers a way to sell individual articles for less than a dollar: https://9to5google.com/guides/peachpit/

I don't think either service ever took off. Probably people were just too cheap :(

------

Edit, at least 3 times, apparently! See fastest963's comment about "Google Contributor": https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38622362

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#37

Post by tlhunter »

littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

I think the Brave browser supports this. Give brave $10 then they provide small amounts of money to content providers. This allows money to pool up and avoid the astronomical transaction fees. I'm not sure how well it works in practice.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#38

Post by solardev »

hedora wrote: post #34
littlefish444 wrote: post #9

Does anyone know why there doesn't exist a micro-transaction capability to buy one marginal ad-free item at a time? E.g. buy just this Economist article for $0.25 rather than subscribing for the whole month? I know there are significant issues with micro-transaction cost but I figure you could set up a little token service with minimum cash-in and cash-out amounts (say $5). Do companies like the Economist crunch the…

Apple News Plus is exactly what you describe. The main problem (and reason I cancelled) is that is doesn’t disincentivize clickbait. If you could curate the homepage to only include feeds of publications you want to pay, then the incentive would be to create a good stream of articles. As it is, I got sick of clickbait from a few big publications, so their fucking clickbait headlines showed up, but grayed out with a n…

Isn't Apple News Plus just subscription news? That's not really the same as pay-per-article, where readers (not the middleman) can choose which individual articles to pay to read -- kinda like how we have pay-to-read scientific journals, but usually at the $50/article range, not <$1.

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#39

Post by JTon »

syndicatedjelly wrote: post #28
DaiPlusPlus wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Credit card networks impose relatively high minimums - so transactions under ~$4 USD don't make it worthwhile. PayPal has their own microtransactions scheme (which is difficult to get approved for), I assume PayPal has enough clout to pull it off. The other approach: having a PAYG balance, has the problem of requiring users to pay a somewhat larger amount up-front (e.g. $5 or $10) which is off-putting to people who'v…

Unfortunately, a lot of American banking infrastructure is hard-coded on ancient systems, so it’s entirely possible that initiating a single transaction really has reached it’s price-bottom. That’s also why it takes 2 days to send money to people, in an era of instant communication. Many companies (like Stripe and Venmo) mask these deficiencies. But when you have to do something like a wire transfer, you find that it…

> That’s also why it takes 2 days to send money to people, in an era of instant communication.

I always assumed anti-fraud had something to do with it. Give the victims time to notice and the institutions the ability to reverse transactions without loss

Re: Welcome to the ad-free internet

#40

Post by syndicatedjelly »

mcny wrote: post #7

Is it just me or does it feel like this is actually a submarine article by WPP to kind of console its clients and tell them that it’s OK. Everything is OK and WPP is in control?

This is such a lame argument to make, because it could apply to an article about anything. Don’t agree with the analysis? It must be paid for by {insert lobby agency}.

Was there anything that was discussed that you disagree with?

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