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Won’t Subscribe

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Re: Won’t Subscribe

#201

Post by etripe »

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…

> This idea, of course, is not feasible, because it is such a huge distraction from the core business, and is potentially a distraction that has the potential to cause real harm to the core business.

If potential customers think you're in a different core business than you think you are, what makes you sure you're right, and what would make you re-evaluate?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#202

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

bigiain wrote: post #138
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…

And I see it amongst my friends, who're gradually all moving to "pay for a subscription to something, to salve the 'I'm not a pirate!' conscience, and go back to BitTorrent and shared/private Emby server networks for anything you want to watch that's not on the service you're paying for".

In 2003 Valve determined that piracy, then rampant in PC gaming, was a service problem. They built Steam to provide a better service than piracy. Years later, after Steam has all but eliminated PC game piracy and helped create a thriving market even for the niche-est of genres, their competitors complain about their de-facto monopoly.

There's a lesson in here somewhere.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#203

Post by JulianMorrison »

jeremiahlee wrote: post #114

I 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…

Oh hey, now my 20 background tabs can cost me money, that's useful. Will they show a ($) icon like they currently show a "playing sound" icon?

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#204

Post by kyrers »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #189
kyrers wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The calling to unsubscribe always gets me. How does this still happen in 2020?

Because someone figured out that hiring one person on minimum wage to handle a phone queue results in them retaining more people than providing a nice and easy unsubscribe option.

Yeah, I understand that.

I just think we as consumers should not accept that.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#205

Post by PaulHoule »

The "New York Times" probably thinks it is good enough that you'll subscribe to them and not subscribe to the others.

Other publications might kid themselves about that, but few of them will be able to kid anyone else.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#206

Post by cableshaft »

xorfish wrote: post #197
microcolonel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> ...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.

It's an interesting idea, but seems easily gamed. One person subscribes, and posts all the links to other link sites (like Reddit, HackerNews). Maybe there's a /r/xNewspaper that anyone can go to that posts links to every article from that newspaper.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#207

Post by znpy »

Nextgrid wrote: post #146
ako wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It solves the problem only partially: newspapers can't live from small payments on popular articles only, they need bundling to generate enough volume. Same thing can be seen with music industry: spotify doesn't pay enough per play, so artists are now told to use spotify as marketing, and make money from performances. Not sure what a newspaper performance would look like.

> newspapers can't live from small payments on popular articles only Printed newspapers were surviving just fine despite selling for a few bucks despite it being a physical piece of paper that needed to be printed & delivered on very tight schedules. The same model should be applied for the web - the price point is already proven to be affordable enough for the majority of the market, and the lack of logistics would…

> Printed newspapers were surviving just fine

Oh boy, that's so not the case.

My previous job was still in IT but the company had a strong foothold in the news&media sector. Most newsroom are struggling and have been for at least the last ten years.

Digital content has eroded newspapers' income very very much.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#208

Post by ansible »

flas9sd wrote: post #169
notatoad wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

blendle (NL) was aquired by a french publisher very recently. I'm not intimate with the numbers, but the founder wrote in dutch on medium.com about their model multiple times. The Webapp interface to browse the daily crop of Newspapers is actually pretty great, I use it on a handheld. The problem with pay-per-article is the overhead in thinking about "do I want to read this?", but from a consumer perspective it's lik…

I didn't find the decision to pay-to-read an article on Blendle all that burdensome.

My issues with Blendle were mostly with how it was implemented in practice.

1. Time lag. Someone links a NYT article on Reddit. Ooops! can't read it yet. Have to wait for the print edition to come out, and then it is up on Blendle.

2. Linking. See above. I can't just go to a NYT (or other site), and click on a "pay with Blendle" icon.

I could have lived with the above limitations, but discovery was also poor.

3. No digital index. For magazines and newspapers, you look at a low-resolution scan of the printed version. Then you can click on an article to get a summary pop-up to pay for it. I don't want to browse a digital analogue of a paper magazine! Show me a complete list of the articles with the summaries in a scrollable list, and let me pick from them to purchase access.

These limitations are all no doubt part of the licensing deal with the publishers, but it is so annoying.

As a consumer, I am just not going to spend $1000 USD per year on a bunch of different newspaper and magazine subscriptions. I have a lower amount I'm willing to spend in total. But I am willing to spend.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#209

Post by SloopJon »

It's not the point of the article, but where did he find the Wall Street Journal for $120 / year? I'm seeing an introductory rate of $20 / month for a year, and $40 / month thereafter.

Re: Won’t Subscribe

#210

Post by yxhuvud »

scrollaway wrote: post #82
jmnicolas wrote: post #79

In France the state is funding massively the mainstream press since it's not economically viable. As you can imagine it has done wonders for plurality of opinions and journalists feeling free to criticize the government ...

I'm french, I've lived in France, the UK, Greece, Sweden and Belgium. Of all those countries by far France has the most self-criticizing, cynical and sarcastic press of all. We're really good at making fun of ourselves and especially criticizing our own government. What on earth makes you write your comment?

In Sweden, we also have very large press grants.

At the same time, the biggest and most profitable newspaper (Dagens Nyheter, DN) doesn't take those grants. A large part of their profitability is that they have actually managed to make people pay for their online subscription and they are more profitable now than they have ever been.

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