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Who's doing this to my internet?

veekaybee.github.io

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Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#121

Post by 6stringmerc »

golergka wrote: post #52

Users. Users always talk that they would love to pay. The problem is, they never do. They blog and write on forums about what they would like to see, but the things they write are always very, very different from what they actually do, according to the data. You remember how in this whole Reddit debacle Pao said that "most of users don't really care about this scandal" and got downvoted to hell? It could very well be…

Correlative:

Auto enthusiast site commenters claiming "If Manufacturer A would build this car with X motor, Y drivetrain, and at Z price, I'd totally buy that!" or "If only Manufacturer B would bring Car XYZ to the US it would be a huge hit!"

If history is any indicator, no, those types of vehicles will not sell well. Recently I've seen the discussion around the Chevrolet SS (Holden import), because while on paper it's on par with other performance sedans, it's selling very poorly. Granted, it had low expectations by GM, but it's just an example of this mentality / vocal minority over-inflating their self-importance in the grand scheme of things.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#122

Post by romaniv »

There is a working business model that does not rely on ads: Kickstarter.

The problem with making everything subscription-based is that it changes the dynamic of the website. A lot.

An interesting experiment would be to allow people to pay not just for themselves, but for a few others as well. I.e. you've seen something good, you pay to get rid of ads for that item and it removes ads for N other people as well. Sure, there will be free-riders. That's the point. I postulate that those free-riders would be the people would otherwise not use the platform at all.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#123

Post by nandhp »

panic wrote: post #11

How can a web site survive without ads? You can charge a subscription fee, but many users who would tolerate ads will just leave when faced with a paywall. You can ask for donations. Or you can run the site as cheaply as possible and try to support it out of your own pocket. Given these alternatives, it's easy to see why people support their site with ads. So how can we make these alternatives more attractive? Or is…

It would be really exciting to have something like Google Contributor go mainstream: https://www.google.com/contributor/welcome/

Basically, solving this problem by allow users to set up a prepaid fund with Google and have them deduct website ad revenue from there instead of showing me an ad -- and have it work everywhere Google ads are displayed.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#124

Post by verbin217 »

pjc50 wrote: post #81
pi-err wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or it says that there's an untapped opportunity for low friction, micro-transactions instead of "ads" or full-fledged purchases on unknown websites. It's clear by now that ads are for lazy. If your plan is to monetize your site with ads, today just like 10 years ago, you lost. Edit: surprised by the negativity on her reaction for _hacker_news. She's rebuffed by the $ and time investment for a single song ("unknown we…

Microtransactions have a minimum mental cost to the user. This is why even the services that could track your actual consumption and bill you to the penny don't.

If micro transactions break into public awareness it might get significantly better. There could be a joint meter app like mint to track usage. You could just sort by a few things like recent cash flow and trivially manage your transactions at scale. Transactions should be tied directly to user level constructs like playing a song or a period of time in a game. These should have consistent costs so that the user can form reasonable expectations without needing to sign off on every transaction. You don't think about how much water costs every time you use the faucet but you're aware enough not to just leave it on. That's the only mental cost that's ultimately necessary.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#125

Post by icebraining »

mcv wrote: post #108
icebraining wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My bank offers free Virtual Credit Cards with a configurable limit. I've heard that some US banks (BofA?) do as well. That limits the exposure to the amount of the payment. And you can still chargeback.

Sounds useful if you can make one credit card for each payment. But you first need to configure that before you can actually pay. What we need (and what Netherland has) is something that just works right away where you really only authorize that one payment without exposing any vulnerable information, using the security of your own bank.

At least here, you can make a CC for each payment. It's a simple form: input max amount, click continue, get CC number.

Here in Portugal we also have the kind of payments you're talking about, but it's not particularly easier than the VCC system.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#126

Post by xirdstl »

ohitsdom wrote: post #5

Really enjoyed this post, but I think some of her thoughts point to the root of the problem. > I started by trying to buy each of them separately. > $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song So she wanted to compensate each artist for the songs she loved, but only at an amount of her choosing? I'm assuming she was expecting 99 cents, so we're essentially haggling over $0.50 here. This shows why the advertising model is so pre…

For these kind of purchases, I have a credit card that allows me to credit virtual card numbers with a limit and expiration that I can set. I'll set the limit to the order amount. If they try to charge more, the transaction is declined.

That, along with the ability to contest charges (chargebacks), makes it a lot less risky.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#127

Post by 72deluxe »

freehunter wrote: post #118
Steuard wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The part that stuck out to me was when the author talked about her desire to have a long-term archive of her favorite music, but wasn't willing to "wait for 2 days for a CD to ship". I can understand not wanting to deal with CDs or not wanting to spend money on less-favorite songs on the album, but focusing on the delay just doesn't click for me.

If the only way you could get to Hacker News was over a dial-up connection, would you switch to dial-up or would you just go to a different site that loads a broadband speed? Waiting two days to then have to deal with the unpleasant experience of getting a physical CD sucks. Wait two days, then rip the CD, then move the file to your phone... or just find other music you like that can be immediately downloaded. I love…

I've done that with my entire music collection. I have only ever bought one MP3 in my entire life. The rest of it is ripped from the CDs that I have bought. If the artist has gone to the effort of recording, mixing, mastering and designing sleeve notes and documenting who took part in the process, then that's really something worth buying.

If we only consider music to be as valuable as background white noise, then downloading it without the associated archive of data is probably worth it. But I think the entire process is worth more, which is why I'll buy it and wait the "forever" of 2 days for a CD to arrive.

I can't believe people consider 2 days for postage for a CD to be a long time. Is this a generation of "I want it NOW NOW NOW NOW" that I am surrounded with?

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#128

Post by logfromblammo »

icebraining wrote: post #7

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

I think the mean price per song is certainly less than $1.50 over my entire music collection.

That assumes an average $15 for CDs with an average of 10 songs on them. At that price, I get the original uncompressed audio, FLAC files for digital storage, and whatever lossy transcoded files I might like to put on my player devices. And all of them are free of DRM, or at least freed from it at the ripping step.

In that light, to pay $1.50 for a digital download of a lossy-encoded file is pure madness. Despite the cost requirements of manufacturing, transporting, and distributing a physical medium, I still think the best value for buying licensed music performances is to get the whole CD and process the digital files yourself.

And whenever I [rarely] buy digital downloads, I will only pay for lossless file formats. I might download a gratis MP3, but only as a means to determine whether I might like to buy the album, or if there is literally no better way to get that recording.

I simply don't trust the digital music distributors to defend my interests in this industry.

Re: Who's doing this to my internet?

#130

Post by 72deluxe »

icebraining wrote: post #7

Another song I loved by an artist I loved was available for sale, but on a tiny third-party music distribution site I'd never heard of, and for $1.50. $1.50 is a lot to pay for a song And then OP wonders why everyone is making free services plastered with ads instead of charging.

I wonder if people give thought to the length of time it takes to learn an instrument, play it well, learn the recording process, record it well, learn the mixing process, mix it well, learn the mastering process, master it well etc. if they are willing to dismiss $1.50 as expensive for a song.

In comparison, how much is a cup of coffee or a portion of chips (for us UK types)?

How much is a trip to the cinema?

It shouldn't be a race to the bottom. If you want bargain-barrel prices, you'll get bargain-barrel quality too.

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