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Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

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Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#11

Post by mvdwoord »

Much like birger, I never paid for any of the 'paywalled' news outlets before. Mostly due to the terrible user experience, t&c, and lack of content (often single newspaper/magazine). Even though I find most content in newspapers not even worth reading, let alone paying for. I do really want to pay for some high quality articles and Blendle makes this possible.

They nailed it for me with the money back option, truly no questions asked. The pre-paid wallet makes me comfortable in that I don't feel tricked/lured into some subscription or other form of overpaying. Overall very smooth UX, no annoying crap. Makes you wonder why so many websites still try to nag me into paying when it only drives me away from them.

Would like to see some (a lot) more titles, especially international, but understand they are working on this. Also, since alexandernl is reading.. please add wordcount to the webinterface and wordcount/price to emails, thanks :)

Other than that, much enjoyed. Keep up the good work!

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#13

Post by walterbell »

alexandernl wrote: post #6
bachmeier wrote: post #3

This is something I've wanted for years. I wish I knew the price though. There is a tendency to overshoot on the price initially and the result is turning off most of the potential market.

Articles cost between €0,10 and €0,30 for newspaper articles. Between €0,20 and €0,40 for magazine articles.

Does the purchase price include user rights comparable to other digital content, like ebooks? E.g. can the article be downloaded for offline reading or searching?

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#15

Post by alexandernl »

mvdwoord wrote: post #11

Much like birger, I never paid for any of the 'paywalled' news outlets before. Mostly due to the terrible user experience, t&c, and lack of content (often single newspaper/magazine). Even though I find most content in newspapers not even worth reading, let alone paying for. I do really want to pay for some high quality articles and Blendle makes this possible. They nailed it for me with the money back option, truly n…

Thanks for the nice words and comments! Working on that!

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#16

Post by allendoerfer »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #2

Have you guys considered a Spotify style subscription model? Say, where I as a reader would pay a fixed monthly fee but would then be able to read as many articles as I wanted from the various sources you guys support throughout the month? Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each. If you have, what were some of the pros and cons you saw i…

This model would incentives click-baiting again.

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#17

Post by jurre »

walterbell wrote: post #13
alexandernl wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Articles cost between €0,10 and €0,30 for newspaper articles. Between €0,20 and €0,40 for magazine articles.

Does the purchase price include user rights comparable to other digital content, like ebooks? E.g. can the article be downloaded for offline reading or searching?

I'm not sure about the specific legalities (I'm a developer at Blendle) but our iOS client offers offline support and we integrate with services like Pocket.

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#18

Post by michaelchisari »

birger wrote: post #4

I'm one of the 'didn't pay for newspapers before' and right now spend a couple of euro's a month on Blendle. Articles cost between € 0,10, and € 0,50. If you buy so much articles from one paper / magazine that it is cheaper to get the whole edition, you get the whole edition. Refund work perfect. You don't like the article -> click -> money back. No questions asked.

You don't like the article -> click -> money back. No questions asked.

That right there might be the most revolutionary part of their approach to online micro payments. You could apply it to so much.

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#19

Post by jacques_chester »

allendoerfer wrote: post #16
haneefmubarak wrote: post #2

Have you guys considered a Spotify style subscription model? Say, where I as a reader would pay a fixed monthly fee but would then be able to read as many articles as I wanted from the various sources you guys support throughout the month? Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each. If you have, what were some of the pros and cons you saw i…

This model would incentives click-baiting again.

I disagree. I think that it would incentivise repeat visitors -- commenters on Reddit, for example, or regulars on a forum.

Blendle's model is better for pure consumption, not for interaction.

Disclaimer: I am working on what will be a competitor.

Re: Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later

#20

Post by jacques_chester »

haneefmubarak wrote: post #2

Have you guys considered a Spotify style subscription model? Say, where I as a reader would pay a fixed monthly fee but would then be able to read as many articles as I wanted from the various sources you guys support throughout the month? Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each. If you have, what were some of the pros and cons you saw i…

> Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to the time or number of articles I read from each.

This has been tried several times without success (Kachingle, Contenture, Readability), possibly because it was all being done on the open web or through proxies, for too little money.

The main problem is that tracking visits on the open web is unreliable with the current approaches.

Blendle arrived after tablets were common, so they can use the proxy model, and they're not doing it on subscription so they don't need to establish a viable minimum monthly amount in the mind of consumers. On the other hand they face the taxi fare problem, which subscription schemes don't.

I started work on my own approach in 2008 and so became waylaid by the tracking problem; I have a patent pending but it's possible I simply moved too late.

On the other hand, my design works for the open web, for mobile, for apps, for games, for music, basically for anything without first needing the protection and support of a walled garden like an app talking to a de facto proxy server.

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