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Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

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Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#211

Post by fmajid »

mmooss wrote: post #185
fmajid wrote: post #45

I have a patent on micropayments for the Web from 1996. 30 years later, the situation hasn't changed and Clay Shirky or Andrew Odlyzko's arguments around the mental cost of microtransactions remain valid. Besides subscriptions to individual publications, the only model that would work is a Spotify-like subscription for a bundle of sites, with the revenue shared according to page views (or better, some metric that doe…

> Clay Shirky or Andrew Odlyzko's arguments around the mental cost of microtransactions remain valid What about iTunes, and money transfer apps like Venmo and Zelle, which people use widely for microtransactions (and more)?

Microtransactions are like paying $0.10 for an article.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#212

Post by reactordev »

jcynix wrote: post #207
NicuCalcea wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who determines severity? What about investigations that take months or years to produce, who counts how many more tokens they should cost compared with a news story about Trump's latest tweet? Do you get a popup asking if you want to pay x tokens for each link? Journalism micropayments have been tried many times before, and never worked. Things haven't substantially changed in the meantime, so what would be different…

Readers who payed (and only those) could vote on a scale whether the article was worth the payment? The amount payed might even be calculated into the vote, e.g. you payed one token and get one vote, I payed two or three tokens and get two votes.

And for those long investigation stories, you can sell the series cheaper up front and give access to all the stories related to that case. Or nickel and dime each post.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#213

Post by boplicity »

antonymoose wrote: post #204
boplicity wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't pay $.001 to $0.05 to get someone to do actual reporting.

How much is an ad impression worth on your local paper?

I don't know -- but I'm a paid subscriber to 4 newspapers.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#214

Post by akst »

dynm wrote: post #65

There is a lot of hate for the idea of micropayments here, so I'd like to offer a counterpoint. I use a service that provides access to a bunch of different LLMs. Each time I call an LLM I, in effect, pay a $0.001 - $0.05 for the response. (Technically, this is implemented as me having to renew earlier.) Each time I make a call, I don't know if the answer will be useful. I don't even know how much it will cost! And i…

I would love the option for pay for usage for many products I am forced into paying a subscription for.

I think one legitimate difficulty with micropayments for a news site (that has a few options to solve) is the reservation price of most readers for a single article might be lower than the cost of handling the transaction. The best option I can think of is the user needs to add credit their account or a credit card or something, which isn’t uncommon but I think some people might see it as a grift where they pay for more than they’re initially getting.

I think one benefit of it or shortcomings is it’ll probably kill off portions with smaller readership, but if that’s not you -you’re no longer paying for something you weren’t reading.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#215

Post by AuthAuth »

beeflet wrote: post #191
AuthAuth wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But how many people would really go to another site just to save 0.002? I can already go to the internet archive to read paywalled content. If needed and that option will still be available for the people that dont want to pay the 0.002. Its a social problem and all it takes is one player breaking through. People have done this with far far worse things that people thought were unviable socially. Microbetting, microl…

Your response is predicated on the fact that sites like archive.org already exist and don't charge. In a world with accessible micropayments, I think pretty much everyone would charge. Sites like the internet archive are already funded by donations from viewers like you. I see the scheme as essentially spreading out the donations based on who uses the most bandwidth. It makes it easier for anyone to spin up a mirror…

I dont think everyone would charge. I think everyone who currently runs ads would charge but there would still be purists who host without ads and without micro transactions. It would still cost to implement the processing on your website and simple sites would not want to do this. It might lower the barrier to donation so sites funded by donation could receive more donations but still keep it optional.

Internet archive is not funded on donations from viewers. Its funded off government grants and corporate donations. individual donations make up a tiny %. Micropayments would make Internet archive less reliant on charity from government and corporations and it would not impact peoples ability to spin up a mirror. people can already spin up a mirror but its expensive and would remain expensive.

Anna's archive is whale pricing, a tiny % of people are willing to pay that $5 and the hope is that they subsize costs for the rest of users. I hate this type of monetization and will always oppose it as its highly risky and unfair.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#216

Post by MattGrommes »

hinkley wrote: post #10
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…

We also have PBS as a model.

The problem we have is that there are a ton of sites all asking for $5+. With PBS people can choose to give once at whatever they're comfortable with and aren't dealing with an ever increasing number of $5 charges. Some guy's Medium blog probably isn't worth $5 just like I wouldn't pay $5 for any random show on PBS. But donating to PBS once makes me feel like I'm supporting Frontline, Ken Burns, lots of people I like.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#217

Post by 8organicbits »

Paracompact wrote: post #192
Gigachad wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a misunderstanding of the payment model really. No one watches 150 channels, the pricing is based on you being the average person who watches a subset of them, but it doesn't cost them any extra to provide all of them. Regular users also don't really like usage based fees which is why every consumer plan has a fixed price rather than paying per use. Cloud storage for example charging you for "up to x gb" rather…

How do you explain public utilities? No one has any issue with the fact that flicking a light switch in your home is technically a micropayment, as it consumes extra electricity that comes out in your monthly bill. I would venture to say that what consumers don't like about micropayments is any combination of the following: (1) It's a pain in the ass to provide payment info most places, and comes with the looming par…

Is usage based billing the same as micropayments? In any case, I have one utility company with lines connected to my house, so I put up with whatever they want to bill me. Very different marketplace than news papers.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#218

Post by nabbed »

zeta0134 wrote: post #168
contravariant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

The irritating thing to me here is that I actually don't mind the concept of advertising. Mostly it's the implementation. Newspaper ads don't bug me one bit, because they're not physically capable of moving, animating, dancing, and trying to get my attention. They're not physically capable of tracking my habits and reporting them back to the mothership. They're just... there. Passive. Occasionally interesting, or at…

100% agree!

The other day I was thinking how pleasant it was to read a newspaper (26 years ago) compared to reading the news online today.

With a newspaper, the paragraph you are currently reading doesn't suddenly jump out of view just because some ad finally loaded or was replaced by a different sized ad. The ads were static and so inoffensive back then, but they still made the newspapers lots of money.

There are downsides to newspapers, of course: they are unwieldy on the train, they kill trees, and they get out-of-date really fast.

If some decent publication could replicate the good parts of a newspaper for a modern tablet device ($0.50 or whatever per issue, the ads are static images and never replaced after the page is loaded, and no jumping content), I think I would pay.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#219

Post by SauntSolaire »

SllX wrote: post #124
tyre wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> then I’m not clicking the link and I’ll start demanding that citations to be delivered to me in a form I can read instead, and probably stop providing links in turn. I’m going to go out on a feedback shaped limb and say that demanding things like this from friends isn’t an appealing trait. If they are suggesting it to you, that’s not enough to justify 1/100th of a cent? Brother. Read what they send you or don’t, an…

Demanding your friends engage in a financial transaction with a third party is a different vibe. The reality of what would actually happen is this: if I can’t read it, I can’t read it. If I ask and they’re willing to provide it, then I’ll read it, and I would do the same with them. But the truth is, that would grate on people, and not just with me and mine, but for everyone if we all had to engage in financial transa…

What if the sender covered the micro transaction on the behalf of the receiver? People might be more inclined to send what they see as micro-gifts, rather than micro-obligations.

Re: Micropayments as a reality check for news sites

#220

Post by dylan604 »

zeta0134 wrote: post #168
contravariant wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a particular part in the discussion that rubs me the wrong way (which is more about micropayments as alternative to ads, rather than micropayments themselves) It tends to go something like, if not micropayments then ads, if not ads then subscriptions. And people dislike subscriptions more than ads, and ads more than micropayments so the conclusion is micropayments. But I don't like the way ads are presented a…

The irritating thing to me here is that I actually don't mind the concept of advertising. Mostly it's the implementation. Newspaper ads don't bug me one bit, because they're not physically capable of moving, animating, dancing, and trying to get my attention. They're not physically capable of tracking my habits and reporting them back to the mothership. They're just... there. Passive. Occasionally interesting, or at…

Magazines on the other hand could get annoying, especially with the scratch-n-sniff perfume/cologne ads.

Otherwise, I agree with the bad thing about ads is adTech and not ads themselves. The internet just allowed our worst selves to run rampant with the obvious result coming to fruition.

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