Remarkably prescient
Content Is King (1996)
21–30 of 57 posts
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#22> For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn't working yet, and it may not for some time. And that was back in 1996..
22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!
Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#23Earlier quoted context omitted.
22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!
Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.
Most people won't pay for a subscription and most times the content is too sparse to organize as one despite providing some value (e.g. niche blogs).
I've 2 niche blogs and tried several ways of monetisation along the years. I only kept a direct ad (that adblocks can't detect) and amazon affiliates. I ditched Adsense (from 50€ it dropped to 1€/month) and tried donations (patreon, buymeacoffee, paypal) but it's not the right niche for that (art students).
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.
Most people won't pay for a subscription and most times the content is too sparse to organize as one despite providing some value (e.g. niche blogs). I've 2 niche blogs and tried several ways of monetisation along the years. I only kept a direct ad (that adblocks can't detect) and amazon affiliates. I ditched Adsense (from 50€ it dropped to 1€/month) and tried donations (patreon, buymeacoffee, paypal) but it's not th…
You hit the right point: sparse content is the enemy of the subscription.
If you keep your content focused/niche enough I think overtime you should have a nice following.
I would love to discuss the problems with your two blogs, I'm actually trying to solve them.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!
Is subscription not a good solution? The flow of subscriptions just gets easier and faster for the readers.
Subscription decouples the reward for quality from the consumer.
A good system would create payment by time && Lines Read minus some Rewared for Content produced as Result by the User (Not emotional Engagment drivel in some comment, but actually contributing to a discussion).
Good Content would be peer reviewed by its readers, like it happens here on HN, and those reviews would in return garant those contributing some discount or even reward.
We are so far away from that like earth from mars.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people won't pay for a subscription and most times the content is too sparse to organize as one despite providing some value (e.g. niche blogs). I've 2 niche blogs and tried several ways of monetisation along the years. I only kept a direct ad (that adblocks can't detect) and amazon affiliates. I ditched Adsense (from 50€ it dropped to 1€/month) and tried donations (patreon, buymeacoffee, paypal) but it's not th…
You hit the right point: sparse content is the enemy of the subscription. If you keep your content focused/niche enough I think overtime you should have a nice following. I would love to discuss the problems with your two blogs, I'm actually trying to solve them.
[deleted]
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#27> For the Internet to thrive, content providers must be paid for their work. The long-term prospects are good, but I expect a lot of disappointment in the short-term as content companies struggle to make money through advertising or subscriptions. It isn't working yet, and it may not for some time. And that was back in 1996..
22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!
Taxws on wealth & income.
Information is a public good.
https://www.scribd.com/document/370801872/Joseph-Stiglitz-Kn...
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#28Earlier quoted context omitted.
22 years later, we still don’t have a good way to pay for content!
I think we do - advertising is still a perfectly legitimate way to pay for 'free' content., plus subscriptions where they make sense. The current problem isn't that we can't or won't pay, or we can't or won't accept advertising. It's that each generation of adtech becomes more and more user-hostile until we're forced to fight back. So the popup became the pop-under, and devolved into popup bombs until browsers were f…
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Re: Content Is King (1996)
#29At any given moment there usually seem to be one or two New York Times articles on the HN front page, which I assume means a reasonable proportion of us are subscribers. I don't really see what's wrong with the subscription / paywall model, other than it means letting go of "information wants to be free" dogma and admitting Rupert Murdoch was right about something. At this point it seems preferable to the ad-driven b…
One issue that is not addressed by the subscription model is the subsidizing effect that the ad-based model has: The finance professional who lives in New York has very valuable page views. The African school girl does not. Yet, through advertising their values are averaged. The affluent subsidize the poor without even knowing it. Putting content behind a pay-wall reduces this effect and creates an informational disp…
For me this is the only positive aspect of our ad-based Internet. It allows people with no money or means to use it - be it a poor African girl, or just me when I was a kid - to access the same information everyone else can. If we could solve that somehow, then killing off Internet advertising would immediately improve the world.
Re: Content Is King (1996)
#30> A major reason paying for content doesn't work very well yet is that it's not practical to charge small amounts. The cost and hassle of electronic transactions makes it impractical to charge less than a fairly high subscription rate. > But within a year the mechanisms will be in place that allow content providers to charge just a cent or a few cents for information. If you decide to visit a page that costs a nickel…
It is more possible now to do though thanks to cryptocurrencies. The brave browser in particular has built in micropayments feature. https://brave.com/introducing-brave-payments/
Cryptocurrencies don't solve practically any problem that a MYSQL server can't solve