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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#21

Post by simonw »

rexreed wrote: post #4

I think paywalls for journalism are retrograde. The exact people who can benefit from good journalism (the uninformed) are the exact people who won't subscribe. The people who are already in the demographic for the publication and informed are the ones subscribing. This is the inverse of what you'd think you'd want as a journalist. This is part of the overall news and social media echo-chamber, confirmation-bias indu…

I think many people in the news industry agree with you. The problem is that good journalism costs a lot of money, and the advertising business model has collapsed. It needs to be paid for somehow.

This is also why non-profit news organizations are growing in influence. https://members.inn.org/directory is a good list of those. They tend to be supported by donations or wealthy benefactors, which is itself a risk because it's important for them to stay editorially independent from their donors.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#22

Post by wdrw »

boplicity wrote: post #19

As 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…

But how do you get new loyal readers, if not by repeatedly proving your value to new occasional readers?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#23

Post by notatoad »

gombosg wrote: post #7

How would you pay for individual articles? Up-front? (If not, that's called donation.) If so, then what happens if you happen not to enjoy the content? Will you (users) feel like playing lottery every time you purchase an article? Feel disappointed for the purchase you just made? Or just quit paying on a certain site, for a certain author etc. after reading too many 'bad' (subjectively) articles? From this standpoint…

the way blendle works (worked? i heard it was shutting down) is to charge you when you click the link, and the at the bottom of the article offer you a one-click refund if you didn't like it.

it seemed like a great way to do it, but ultimately i found i never used their site because it was slow and confusing to navigate.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#24

Post by nabla9 »

wdrw wrote: post #22
boplicity wrote: post #19

As 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…

But how do you get new loyal readers, if not by repeatedly proving your value to new occasional readers?

5 fee articles per month or something similar (storing the IP, for example).

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#25

Post by imron »

gombosg wrote: post #7

How would you pay for individual articles? Up-front? (If not, that's called donation.) If so, then what happens if you happen not to enjoy the content? Will you (users) feel like playing lottery every time you purchase an article? Feel disappointed for the purchase you just made? Or just quit paying on a certain site, for a certain author etc. after reading too many 'bad' (subjectively) articles? From this standpoint…

Build payments in to the browser like what brave is trying to do.

Then I don’t have to subscribe to a hundred different sites, and sites can have a consistent way to charge small amounts per article without worrying about micro transaction costs.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#26

Post by mlthoughts2018 »

boplicity wrote: post #19

As 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…

At least for newspapers this model can’t work.

When considered as a civic function to ensure unbiased access to facts and emerging critical stories, your approach is completely at odds with consumers, even loyal customers.

The reason is that the market signals emitted by loyal readers don’t have any relationship to objective reality. Loyal readers might disbelieve evolution and only respond to articles that favor creationism. Loyal readers might not cancel their subscription when you omit fair coverage of Julian Assange’s extradition hearing, or make deals with the CIA to delay publishing controversial materials.

Thus optimizing for loyal readers is fundamentally antithetical to the basic civic duty premise. At best, if you did this, you would be an entertainment publication, not a fact reporter. That’s totally OK, but it’s important to point out it won’t work, in principle, for news publications.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#27

Post by notimetorelax »

boplicity wrote: post #19

As 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…

If it were printed newspaper I could go and get one for a few bucks. Digital has nothing to offer of that kind. As the other poster wrote, how else would you expand your readership?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#28

Post by Symbiote »

ziml77 wrote: post #13
autarch wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are still sites doing this. Bloomberg is one I can think of, since I've deleted my cookies (and other local storage) for that site more than once, with success.

I highly doubt Bloomberg cares enough. They make their money selling terminal subscriptions and data feeds for obscene amounts.

Sites are gradually tightening up on workarounds like clearing cookies.

Simply opening Bloomberg nwes in a private tab now fails (I think it's a bug that the site can detect a private tab is used).

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#29

Post by dheera »

gombosg wrote: post #7

How would you pay for individual articles? Up-front? (If not, that's called donation.) If so, then what happens if you happen not to enjoy the content? Will you (users) feel like playing lottery every time you purchase an article? Feel disappointed for the purchase you just made? Or just quit paying on a certain site, for a certain author etc. after reading too many 'bad' (subjectively) articles? From this standpoint…

Mine bitcoin in the browser as the user is reading the article?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#30

Post by Wistar »

mikelward wrote: post #10

> “But wait,” says Mr Manager, “you already subscribe to five publications, so you’ve proved you have a propensity to subscribe! You’re exactly my target market!” Wrong. It’s exactly because I’ve done some subscribing that I’m just not gonna do any more. Exactly. Same thing is happening with cable unbundling. Few people want to subscribe to Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, HBO, ESPN+, Disney+, Peacock, and YouTube TV/Sli…

Starting about a year ago I began to see ever more articles in entertainment media about subscription fatigue and the coming "great re-bundling," especially in streaming services.
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