Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

blog.zgp.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 408 posts

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#21

Post by sanswork »

post-it wrote: post #18
sanswork wrote: post #3

Micropayments work for games because there is some specific outcome I know I want and know paying this money will move me closer to that goal in the immediate future. That isn't the case for news content. In news it's "reading this might be interesting" or being generous "knowing this might improve my life at some point". That delay in outcome will kill micropayments because it again goes from a very easy calculation…

I think the site is right about the "coins" method. If I had an automatic subscription of $10/month to refill my news wallet, and I could pay $0.05 out of it to read an article, I'd do it, especially if it was a use-it-or-lose it system. In fact, if they charged $0.20 per story if you pay directly, or $0.05 per story if you pay out of your auto-reload wallet, I think that could incentivize users to subscribe. Of cour…

People already can't be bothered clicking on the paywall busting links to view articles because the friction is too high. Having to decide if something is potentially worth 20 cents seems easy when you have to make that decision in your mind a single time for something you're obviously interested in but in reality it becomes multiple times a day for things that you are maybe only slightly curious about the fatigue will add up very quickly and I double anyone would do a second reload(if they do the first load at all).

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#23

Post by eli »

jawns wrote: post #2

No, no, no! Micropayments are not the way. We already know the way. It's the cable/streaming model. You pay for a single monthly subscription and get access to substantially all of the major news content. What would need to happen for this to be possible? Cooperation between most of the major news outlets. Not cooperation in an anti-competitive sense, but willingness to participate in this sort of business model. I'm…

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 get paid a lot of money and/or can be assured it somehow will not cannibalize their direct sales.

Who owns the customer relationship? Publishers have been burned pretty much 100% of the time they cede that direct relationship to someone else.

Also, it's been tried: see Scroll, Apple News, Flattr, Coil, Brave BAT...

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#24

Post by cogman10 »

stetrain wrote: post #7
jawns wrote: post #2

No, no, no! Micropayments are not the way. We already know the way. It's the cable/streaming model. You pay for a single monthly subscription and get access to substantially all of the major news content. What would need to happen for this to be possible? Cooperation between most of the major news outlets. Not cooperation in an anti-competitive sense, but willingness to participate in this sort of business model. I'm…

Copying the cable model would favor big media companies over smaller, more local players. A music-streaming style option, where the user's monthly payment is distributed in proportion to the articles they read, might be better. (Although not without it's own issues)

I tend to agree, but the big problem is "who will operate this?".

The music model worked because a heavyweight like apple was able to come in and negotiate with a huge number of labels while simultaneously allowing access to unlabeled content. That expanded with Spotify, though they got there by effectively stealing the music for as long as possible until they were established.

I can't see how that'd work with news. Especially since so many of the news outlets exist and have been created to run propaganda for the owners. A decent number of them are effectively just funded by billionaires that want to push their agendas.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#25

Post by graybeardhacker »

I pay for the Ground News app. It's an aggregator that (somehow) gets me all the articles on a topic, shows me how factual each source is and which way they lean politically. It summarizes the articles so I can ignore the click-bate headline and know whether I want to read more.

I'm honestly not sure why this isn't the standard. It solved all my news problems and fills all my news needs.

I'm honestly not sure what these tiny news sites that have paywalls are thinking. The chances of me paying a monthly fee for news from a single source, let alone a tiny, local, single source, are less than zero.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#26

Post by eli »

carlosjobim wrote: post #16
closewith wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Centralised billing effectively makes serious journalism impossible. Omnibus subscription services will ruthlessly cut anything that affects the bottom line, and effective journalism is necessarily unpopular.

Exactly! That's why Spotify doesn't allow any noisy music or music with curse words. The mainstream public would flee from the platform.

I'd encourage you to ask a recording artist how they like the arrangement they have with Spotify.

But also, yeah, I do think the streaming financial incentives affect what music gets written and produced. Just not necessarily anything to do with cuss words.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#27

Post by hibikir »

sanswork wrote: post #3

Micropayments work for games because there is some specific outcome I know I want and know paying this money will move me closer to that goal in the immediate future. That isn't the case for news content. In news it's "reading this might be interesting" or being generous "knowing this might improve my life at some point". That delay in outcome will kill micropayments because it again goes from a very easy calculation…

I also don't have any proof that the article will be any good. When buying a whole newspaper for the day, if some of the articles are suboptimal, I can still make money from the reliably good stuff. But if I go look at an article, am I getting something good, or is it regurgitated Reuters I read before, plain AI, or completely wrong? The barrier is too high if I don't have a lot of faith in the source, and if I do, I should just subscribe

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#28

Post by parpfish »

mcteamster wrote: post #15

The difference between $0.00 and $0.01 is infinite. But I’m really curious how bad the free experience would have to become before people are open to paying a pittance?

The free experience on the site for every small town newspaper or tv station is horrific. Genuinely among the worst, least usable websites on the internet.

The problem is that the horrendousness doesn’t drive people to pay, it drives them to social media.

And a big part of this is that local papers consider their online presence secondary to print. So paying will get you a physical newspaper and unlimited access to the worst site in the world

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#29

Post by gertlex »

glitchc wrote: post #20

No one reads print anymore. Most people nowadays consume their news either through a Youtube broadcast or a podcast. The news is produced for free and completely paid for through advertising. The folks using this site, we're in the (rather extreme) minority.

Do you think the category of people that "consume their news" via primarily reading headlines from aggregators (google/apple mobile built-in "news") is significant or no?

(this is a big part of my consumption, and is combined with scrolling HN/reddit headlines; often to paywalled sites, which leads me to mostly reading comment discussions on those two sites)

(edit: disclaimer after reading a few other comments: I use Android; so don't have personal experience with Apple News, which may in fact be significantly different/better product)

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#30

Post by parpfish »

jawns wrote: post #2

No, no, no! Micropayments are not the way. We already know the way. It's the cable/streaming model. You pay for a single monthly subscription and get access to substantially all of the major news content. What would need to happen for this to be possible? Cooperation between most of the major news outlets. Not cooperation in an anti-competitive sense, but willingness to participate in this sort of business model. I'm…

If you thought clickbait headlines were annoying when people were competing for ad impressions, just wait until they’re competing for micropayments.
Post reply on HN