This problem has already been solved, centuries ago, by something called the printing press. You go out, buy a single newspaper, which you get to keep, forever. It doesn't track you either.
Won’t Subscribe
191–200 of 362 posts
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#192In Slovakia, bunch of journalist split from mainstream print and started daily news, using WordPress. No ads, but everything behind paywall. Not exactly cheap, but not expensive either.
They now have 43k subscribers (Keep in mind Slovakia is 5m people).
The key was combination of factors, too many to dissect it in comment. Basically it boils down to:
- Only news - Slovak language - High Quality, no clickbait - No ads, snappy websites - Little tracking (at least in comparison with typical news website)
It worked and I extremely happy for them. Keep in mind this is Slovakia, not exactly ultra rich country and people here were never too keen on paying for news.
https://dennikn.sk/1741628/list-predplatitelom-rok-2019-bol-... Translated: https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&u=https...
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#193What's strange is it used to be you would pick up a newspaper at a stand for the day, pay a dollar or whatever, and then have quite a lot of articles to read for that day. But now, it is impossible, the only way is to lock-in. And that may be for the rest of your life if the complaints about the labirynth you may navigate to unsubscribe the nytimes is to be believed. If there was some sort of daily access pass that d…
Newspapers used to make most of their money from adverts. Facebook/Google have stolen all that revenue which is why the media companies have all been struggling to find new business models.
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#194What exactly are the news publishers even providing these days? They aren't a trust authority and they aren't a distribution platform. The internet undermined the first and replaced the latter. The future could be readers having a direct relationship with authors, and necessary infrastructure "unbundled" as it were. Author pays a non-partisan fact check service to accredit what they say. With proper accreditation the…
I was thinking that too. People are voluntarily aggregating news for likes, karma, points and recognition. Gathering some news on a certain webpage and re-writing it in your own words is NOT worth my money. But many online news pages are exactly like this nowadays.
HOWEVER
There is still plenty investigative journalism around. Or even sites that take "complex news" such as the newest draft for a certain law and condense this 40 page paper into understandable pieces. This is the kind of stuff I am donating for.
Everything else I can find on HN / Reddit / Or some of the linklogs I follow. Hell, half of the stuff Is just sent to me via $InstantMessenger
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#195As a long-time publisher, there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. I publish for the loyal readers that I have worked hard to cultivate, engage, and enrichen. The primary work is one of building a relationship with a loyal readership, based on consistency and quality. Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who…
How do acquire new, loyal subscribers if your site is “a little annoying to people who are not [your] loyal subscribers?”
like lwn.net? A local digital, ad free and independent magazine (republik.ch) has the same model.
Everyone with a link can access an article.
Everyone with a subscription has access to the links for the articles and can share them.
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#196I think the Web Monetization API currently incubating as a proposed W3C standard would provide the experience you are desiring. Consumers establish a wallet provider and install a browser extension (for now, until the standard is formally adopted). When a Web Monetization HTML tag is encountered, the browser starts streaming micropayments every second while you are engaging with the content. Content creators can then…
"the browser starts streaming micropayments every second while you are engaging with the content." This sounds bad. Websites will have even more reason to delay you with slow scrolling, filler text, popup windows just to make you stay on the website longer. Kind of like subscription based MMORPGs have slow travel times, long character leveling and a lot of grind to make you play longer.
It sounds really bad, though it's pretty hard to understand. Webmonetization.org/explainer is a 404, but I think I found it at https://webmonetization.org/docs/explainer/. One thing it says is "It should also be possible to: Tell the browser NOT to pay a particular website any money." We may end up with blocking lists like ad blockers, and getting put on or taken off such a list could be very contentious. Clickbait, introductory waffle, deliberately hard to understand information, bloated articles around tiny snippets of useful information, etc. would all be strongly incentivised. I'd rather just block every payment by default, and manually enable a few.
Coil's website is very vague and light on information, but two things it says are 1) you pay $5 per month [1], and 2) Coil pays websites $0.36 per hour spent [2]. That's ~14 hours of engaging with content per month, or just 30 minutes per day. What happens when it runs out? Payments stop? Access is cut off? Have to top up like a pay-as-you-go phone?
I think if I ever signed up for such a system I would become very practised at quickly judging a site and closing the tab. I visit plenty of sites I wouldn't give money to. Why not just give me a button to click when I want to pay 10c or whatever?
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#197As a long-time publisher, there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. I publish for the loyal readers that I have worked hard to cultivate, engage, and enrichen. The primary work is one of building a relationship with a loyal readership, based on consistency and quality. Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who…
> ...there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. Okay, good luck with that. I don't know how somebody becomes a “loyal reader” if they can't even read your website to begin with. Especially with how many of these subscription rags play outrageous frame games and use facts to tell lies and half truths, it's insulting enough without half the article di…
There is an easy solution for this problem.
Everyone with the link can access the article.
Everyone who subscribes can access the links for the articles and share them.
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#198I think the Web Monetization API currently incubating as a proposed W3C standard would provide the experience you are desiring. Consumers establish a wallet provider and install a browser extension (for now, until the standard is formally adopted). When a Web Monetization HTML tag is encountered, the browser starts streaming micropayments every second while you are engaging with the content. Content creators can then…
So it trusts the client's browser to determine what they owe? If the payment is relying on goodwill that might be ok, I suppose. Their Documentation and Explainer links are both broken.
The explainer seems to have moved here: https://webmonetization.org/docs/explainer/
The Docs link at the top works, so it's supposed to go to https://webmonetization.org/docs, which redirects to https://webmonetization.org/docs/getting-started
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#199As a long-time publisher, there is only one primary metric that matters to me: loyal readers. I don't publish for the occasional visitor. I publish for the loyal readers that I have worked hard to cultivate, engage, and enrichen. The primary work is one of building a relationship with a loyal readership, based on consistency and quality. Our websites, as they're designed, are probably a little annoying to people who…
As a publisher maybe it is time to rethink your primary metric. As a long-time reader, i'm not interesting in being a loyal reader, i'm interested in reading the best news. I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify, and i don't limit myself to the news of one publisher.
> I don't limit myself to the music of one band, so i really appreciate spotify
this is a bizarre analogy
no one had to limit themselves to listening to only one band before Spotify
Re: Won’t Subscribe
#200I think the Web Monetization API currently incubating as a proposed W3C standard would provide the experience you are desiring. Consumers establish a wallet provider and install a browser extension (for now, until the standard is formally adopted). When a Web Monetization HTML tag is encountered, the browser starts streaming micropayments every second while you are engaging with the content. Content creators can then…
The other nice thing about Web Monetization is that you can use it to divide earnings to content providers on your site through probabilistic revenue sharing [0].
I have been using it for the last 3 months and it is simple to implmentent and helps support an open standard.
The concern on basing payment on length of the site visit are valid and something I think will need to be addressed at some point. People will try to game it as it gains acceptance.
Awarding the length of visit also isn't aligned with the goal of all types of websites. My site is a web search engine, and the goal is for people to spend as little time on the site as possible because it means I sent them to where they needed to go by giving them the right result quickly.
I do hope it gains greater acceptance.
[0] https://webmonetization.org/docs/probabilistic-rev-sharing/