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Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

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Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#131

Post by jasode »

1659447091 wrote: post #76
subpixel wrote: post #51

I pay for subscriptions, several, but I am never going to pay one publication a small fee every time I read an article. That model is completely counter-intuitive and punitive to the consumer. What I _would _do is pay a flat fee to subscribe to several publications. That's the only path: to give people more value than they expect for less money than they expect. It could be multi-tiered: the more publications you sub…

> What I _would _do is pay a flat fee to subscribe to several publications. Apple News+ is ~$13 https://www.apple.com/apple-news/ The list of publications included https://www.apple.com/apple-news/publications/

>Apple News+ is ~$13 The list of publications included

Fyi... Apple News+ subscribers don't get the full subscription to all the participating publications. This means a subset of articles and/or partial articles (teasers) that require extra payment to get past a paywall to read the rest of the story. This surprises some people.

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/why-dont-i-see-full-art...

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#132

Post by reactordev »

dynm wrote: post #65

There is a lot of hate for the idea of micropayments here, so I'd like to offer a counterpoint. I use a service that provides access to a bunch of different LLMs. Each time I call an LLM I, in effect, pay a $0.001 - $0.05 for the response. (Technically, this is implemented as me having to renew earlier.) Each time I make a call, I don't know if the answer will be useful. I don't even know how much it will cost! And i…

I think a token system where $10 gets you 1,000 tokens and each read is logged and costs 1-5 tokens, depending on severity of the news and its age, is a great idea.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#133

Post by littlecranky67 »

spir wrote: post #53

If micropayments have a future, it's on blockchains. https://www.x402.org/ https://www.8004scan.io/networks https://www.x402scan.com/

It will be on bitcoin, and bitcoin only. Except the payment will done with Lightning. And the lightning network will probably be used to send a stablecoin, utilizing taproot assets. But shurely not some shitcoins that is x402 built on (Ethereum, Solana & Co.) :)

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#134

Post by nemomarx »

airstrike wrote: post #114
rjbwork wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most people mind ads. Throw up an animated gif or a jpg banner that you serve from your domain. Nobody is blocking that. What people dislike are mountains of javascript that track everything you do across broad swathes of the internet and then sell that to businesses and governments that are effectively engaging in mass psychological experiments on us.

Feels like there's an opportunity for an "ethical ads" platform

does Google AdWords still exist? text only ads solves a lot of these issues

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#135

Post by eli »

cyberax wrote: post #52
eli wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think this is even harder to make work than straightforward micropayments with crypto or paypal or similar. Is it the same subscription fee no matter what publications I read or how many articles? (If it varies directly based on what I'm reading then I think it is just micropayments.) Publications with healthy subscription revenue like WSJ or the Economist are not going to be interested in participating unless they…

Scroll was successful. It provided more income than ads to participating companies. So it was hastily acquired and killed by Twitter. Flattr required installing an extension (sorry, no), Brave is a whole separate browser, Coil was based around cryptocrap.

I agree Scroll seemed very promising but I'm not sure how successful they were. Did they provide more income than ads from subscription fees? Meeting that goal while burning investors money is less impressive.

Scroll also used a browser extension by the way.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#136

Post by AuthAuth »

airstrike wrote: post #114
rjbwork wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most people mind ads. Throw up an animated gif or a jpg banner that you serve from your domain. Nobody is blocking that. What people dislike are mountains of javascript that track everything you do across broad swathes of the internet and then sell that to businesses and governments that are effectively engaging in mass psychological experiments on us.

Feels like there's an opportunity for an "ethical ads" platform

Mozilla tried this. But the only people who want this is consumers. Advertisers want as much info as possible to target ads so would never choose this option unless heavily pressured by consumers.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#137

Post by yunohn »

If one thinks about this problem deeply, and the current solution of showing ads, you may realize that micro transactions are already “implemented”. Ads are paid for by the advertiser as mille-impressions (or conversion, etc), which works way better than demanding money at that level - and they get it no matter what. This implicit payment works way better than making consumers think about it and start the debate of value and trust and so on that everyone are debating here.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#138

Post by TheGRS »

scuff3d wrote: post #123
subpixel wrote: post #51

I pay for subscriptions, several, but I am never going to pay one publication a small fee every time I read an article. That model is completely counter-intuitive and punitive to the consumer. What I _would _do is pay a flat fee to subscribe to several publications. That's the only path: to give people more value than they expect for less money than they expect. It could be multi-tiered: the more publications you sub…

I think there's some digital equivalent of the old "pay 25 cents for a newspaper" model buried in the discussion somewhere. If I had a quick, anonymous way to pay a site 5 cents to read an article, or a dollar to read all the articles I want for some time period, or something to that effect, I'd happily pay that from time to time. What I don't want is a million subscriptions I have to pay 3 or 4 dollars a month for,…

We could make a loot box for news! Maybe you get today's WSJ, maybe you get a National Enquirer.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#139

Post by SllX »

AuthAuth wrote: post #129
SllX wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Newspapers were already bundled that way: you got national news, local news, business news, sports, the funny pages, classifieds, wire stories from AP & Reuters, etc. Then they went onto the web and were forced to prioritize, but where the entire bundling idea falls apart is you’re suggesting that we bundle the bundles. Here’s the harsh reality: most news is already priced appropriately for the value that it delivers…

Completely disagree that news is already priced appropriately for the value it delivers to people. I dont pay for the news I read because its not valued at $10 a month for me but I still do value it. For me $2 a month is what i value it but since they dont offer that as an option I cant pay. If you're to broke to click on a link because it might cost 0.0001 cent just say so. Maybe your friends can give you a cent so…

$2/month or $10/momth is apparently not the actual price then if you’re able to get it for $0/month.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#140

Post by kelvinjps10 »

contravariant wrote: post #104
dynm wrote: post #65

There is a lot of hate for the idea of micropayments here, so I'd like to offer a counterpoint. I use a service that provides access to a bunch of different LLMs. Each time I call an LLM I, in effect, pay a $0.001 - $0.05 for the response. (Technically, this is implemented as me having to renew earlier.) Each time I make a call, I don't know if the answer will be useful. I don't even know how much it will cost! And i…

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

I don't mind sponsored ads that are mostly static inside the video or text. Also if creators accept sponsors that are too bad their reputation might be affected.

The only thing that can be in some cases it's influencing the content and the creator not providing genuine content because conflict of interest

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