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The rich niche

therebooting.substack.com

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Re: The rich niche

#11

Post by hammock »

xyzzyz wrote: post #8
hammock wrote: post #4

Author's argument seems to be that the only profitable publishers are subscription-based, and therefore cater to the rich, because only the rich can afford subscriptions. That seems to ignore...the entire history of publishing. Like how a newspaper used to cost a quarter and everyone read it.

The newspaper price was heavily subsidized by ad revenue. If the paper had to depend solely on the sales revenue, the price would have had been much higher than a quarter, and consequently, much fewer people would buy it regularly.

Ad-supported business models are more prevalent and profitable now then at any other time in history. Why do you think publishing was left out?

Re: The rich niche

#12

Post by Gys »

bediger4000 wrote: post #2

> Credible information shouldn’t be a luxury good. Shockingly, a good substack article.

A better quote:

> Jonah Peretti was right in 2017 when he warned that paywalls are “bad for democracy.” Credible information shouldn’t be a luxury good.

Paywall does not automatically mean luxury? I think the actual problem is the average internet user expects everything to be free, independent from his/her income.

Anecdotal: I have friends with iphones of whom I wonder how they can spend so much on a mobile. It is about making choices.

Re: The rich niche

#13

Post by TravHatesMe »

fallingknife wrote: post #9
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

I was recently a rep for the office's annual charity drive. At the end of it our office (west coast) was compared to offices in other parts of the country. While we had lots of one-time donations, literally nobody signed up for "workplace giving", to have money regularly taken off their paychecks. It is about fear an uncertainty. When people are stretched thin they will still give money when they can. But when is key…

Office charity drives are already bad enough in that they socially pressure employees to give money. I would be furious if the company I worked for asked me to start recurring donations out of my paycheck. Keep employer-employee relationships to strictly business. I can donate to charity on my own time.

My father mentioned that while working for banks, back in his day (~25 years ago), there were "guidelines" of how much you should donate to $bigNameCharity depending on your position. He was pretty much forced to donate $1500/year, a lot of money back then. Of course, way up the hierarchy, someone was friends with the charity's founders. And of course, these charities paid out huge salaries and expensed extravagant "business trips". Typical.

Re: The rich niche

#14

Post by ajsnigrutin »

fallingknife wrote: post #9
sandworm101 wrote: post #6

I was recently a rep for the office's annual charity drive. At the end of it our office (west coast) was compared to offices in other parts of the country. While we had lots of one-time donations, literally nobody signed up for "workplace giving", to have money regularly taken off their paychecks. It is about fear an uncertainty. When people are stretched thin they will still give money when they can. But when is key…

Office charity drives are already bad enough in that they socially pressure employees to give money. I would be furious if the company I worked for asked me to start recurring donations out of my paycheck. Keep employer-employee relationships to strictly business. I can donate to charity on my own time.

All charity done by big companies smells shitty to me... you're a multimillion $$$ company, and you want me to donate 20$ to feed the poor?

Re: The rich niche

#15

Post by ahelwer »

throwaway22032 wrote: post #5

You can argue that this is a feedback loop, though. I can survive on minimum wage in the UK, therefore if I earn min wage + 1,000 (after tax), I can afford these subscriptions. The question is whether I prefer that over other things. I prioritised learning materials, computers, etc in my youth when I had a hilariously low budget and it paid dividends. The questions IMO are: 1) to what extent is the economy zero sum,…

Reading the news is, in my opinion, nearly diametrically opposed to investing in yourself. You will get a better understanding of current events (upon hearing of them from others, the best filter that money can't even buy) by reading history books exploring the past couple hundred years. The news is an entertainment product where personalities are constantly making statements or predictions that never pan out, and they never face any penalty for it. Look at how nearly everyone involved in the media push for the Iraq war still has a career and is seemingly respected by their peers. Look at how half the media lost their heads over the Trump/Russia thing, leading people on for three years straight, never amounting to anything. Someone who completely ignored that entire thing would be massively better off intellectually (and be better informed about the world) than someone who hung onto the daily "the walls are closing in" predictions.

Daily or even weekly, maybe monthly reading of the news is over 95% noise and is a pure negative for personal development.

Re: The rich niche

#16

Post by mabub24 »

The author mentions that they've contributed to Puck, which is a comical example of this: https://puck.news/

Open up the side menu and you'll see you can select each of Puck's area of interest:

- Hollywood

- Wall Street

- Silicon Valley

- Washington

It would be easier to describe these as "bubbles".

Re: The rich niche

#17

Post by paulpauper »

I think this is also why some writers are making so much from substack. There is a huge market for affluent readers with disposable income. People will pay to support their favorite creators.

Re: The rich niche

#18

Post by throwaway22032 »

ahelwer wrote: post #15
throwaway22032 wrote: post #5

You can argue that this is a feedback loop, though. I can survive on minimum wage in the UK, therefore if I earn min wage + 1,000 (after tax), I can afford these subscriptions. The question is whether I prefer that over other things. I prioritised learning materials, computers, etc in my youth when I had a hilariously low budget and it paid dividends. The questions IMO are: 1) to what extent is the economy zero sum,…

Reading the news is, in my opinion, nearly diametrically opposed to investing in yourself. You will get a better understanding of current events (upon hearing of them from others, the best filter that money can't even buy) by reading history books exploring the past couple hundred years. The news is an entertainment product where personalities are constantly making statements or predictions that never pan out, and th…

I agree, I guess I was addressing the general point about paying for information.

Orwell's Books vs. Cigarettes is just as poignant today as it was then.

By forgoing that pint at the pub earlier and buying textbooks, now I can afford both.

Re: The rich niche

#19

Post by ohwellhere »

hammock wrote: post #11
xyzzyz wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The newspaper price was heavily subsidized by ad revenue. If the paper had to depend solely on the sales revenue, the price would have had been much higher than a quarter, and consequently, much fewer people would buy it regularly.

Ad-supported business models are more prevalent and profitable now then at any other time in history. Why do you think publishing was left out?

Newspapers were information and entertainment to many; the eyeballs coming for the latter subsidized the former. They lost the entertainment eyeballs -- now what happens to those who need reliable information?

This article is decrying the outcome of that, maybe.

Re: The rich niche

#20

Post by thechao »

TravHatesMe wrote: post #13
fallingknife wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Office charity drives are already bad enough in that they socially pressure employees to give money. I would be furious if the company I worked for asked me to start recurring donations out of my paycheck. Keep employer-employee relationships to strictly business. I can donate to charity on my own time.

My father mentioned that while working for banks, back in his day (~25 years ago), there were "guidelines" of how much you should donate to $bigNameCharity depending on your position. He was pretty much forced to donate $1500/year, a lot of money back then. Of course, way up the hierarchy, someone was friends with the charity's founders. And of course, these charities paid out huge salaries and expensed extravagant "…

There's a lot of awful charities out there. I've used "https://www.charitynavigator.org" in the past to determine which charities are worth giving to, or not. However, I've personally interacted with three charities "on the ground" (in Hospital situations): Shriner's (burn unit in Galveston); McDonald's; and, St. Jude's. I 100% guarantee you that those charities are in the business of helping people (kids, in these cases), and doing so for the best-bang-for-their-buck they can. All three are non-religious (if that's important to you).

I think a lot of the people who read HN are probably in a life situation where they can help. Please do so.

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