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Subscription Hell

techcrunch.com

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Re: Subscription Hell

#41

Post by always_good »

Semirhage wrote: post #3
scarface74 wrote: post #2

You can't have it both ways. Either you pay for high quality content or you deal with intrusive ads.

The irony of saying that on a popular site that does neither of those things should be lost on no one.

I think it's more ironic that your example of a site doing it right is one run by a company with deep pockets that can afford for the site to not print money directly. That's not the future of the internet that I want. In fact, it's terrifying.

This misunderstanding is why the internet is gradually becoming more and more centralized. People don't want to pay money and they don't want to see ads. The only sites that can brave that reality are charities, sites that confer other benefits to the organization (like HN), and the few major services that people will pay for (like Netflix). Not much in between, and the sites in between were basically enabled by ads like the collaborative writing forum I grew up on.

Re: Subscription Hell

#42

Post by lajhsdfkl »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to understand what people want. The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero articles). Now the pa…

How do they win if they end up making less money? What you are paying for is journalists doing research every month to produce those articles so you could access them on demand. If you want that on demand access you need to pay them for the work they do every month not the work they do one off.

Re: Subscription Hell

#44

Post by djhworld »

The thing I don't understand about this article is the author makes out like he's been forced into this situation, the "hell" he talks about is entirely of his own making.

Re: Subscription Hell

#45

Post by techsupporter »

baxtr wrote: post #37
techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

True. A subscription to Office 365 comes down to 99 Euros per years. Of course you’d pay maybe 150 every three years or so for a new version back in the days, but still that’s double. Also, I wonder whether this will lead to a slower development of the software. Before you’d have to create a leap forward to impress people to buy the new version, if the old version was still good enough.

I like that you mentioned Office 365 because I see that as "subscription done right." You can still buy perpetual licenses for the components of Office, you can easily store the data you created with those components locally, and if you stop paying for Office-as-a-subscription the same programs still let you view (but not edit) your data.

Carrot Weather App is another good one. Pay $5 once to get a really polished weather app with some basic "cloud" functions thrown in, like notifications to a phone device, some fun "achievements," and a pretty good weather data feed. If you want the super-accurate feed or if you want more advanced notifications and mobile device access (e.g. repeatedly on your Apple Watch), pay up for the subscription because it costs the dev more. And, if you stop paying, that $5 you initially paid is still valuable because the underlying app still works.

Re: Subscription Hell

#46

Post by JustSomeNobody »

techsupporter wrote: post #33

At the time of this writing, all of the comments here are focused on content, but I want to touch on the author's bit about software: > It’s not just Bloomberg and media — it’s software too. I used to write everything in Ulysses, a syncing Markdown editor for OS X and iOS. I paid $70 to buy the apps, but then the company switched to a $40 a year annual subscription, and as the dozens of angry reviews and comments ill…

> Sure, have a subscription service for something that needs upkeep, like a syncing service (but get out of here if all you do is just lump it into the user's iCloud storage) or a data feed.

This. If you sell an app and service together, you can charge a recurring fee. If your app is more traditional, then a one time fee for the app is appropriate. Note, this does not mean that you can just add a service willy nilly like and start charging a recurring fee. That's crap.

Re: Subscription Hell

#47

Post by scarface74 »

d2p wrote: post #31
quakenul wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the economics of ad free websites (for now, at least). A large percentage of people simply will not pay for website access, no matter how low the price. So you get your money from those who do, who value the service so highly that parting with it would be huge pain point for them, and, so Bloomberg assumes probably after extensive surveys, those who feel that way about their publication, will likely have 3…

Just because a large percentage won't pay doesn't mean that putting the price high will maximise income. It's possible that at $10/month they'd get 5x the signups. That said, increasing prices is hard; reducing is easy. If you're trying to figure out sweet spot for max revenue is it probably makes sense to start high and slowly reduce it until you find it. If you're on a rolling monthly payment and decrease everyones…

The biggest hurdle is not price elasticity between getting someone to pay $10 versus $35, it's getting people to pay anything instead of something.

Look at the App Store as an example and how hard it is to get people to pay $1.

Besides the people who are willing to pay are by definition people who are willing to spend money - the same demographic that advertisers covet the most. Meaning they can't target their best customers for advertising.

Re: Subscription Hell

#48

Post by lajhsdfkl »

d2p wrote: post #31
quakenul wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Welcome to the economics of ad free websites (for now, at least). A large percentage of people simply will not pay for website access, no matter how low the price. So you get your money from those who do, who value the service so highly that parting with it would be huge pain point for them, and, so Bloomberg assumes probably after extensive surveys, those who feel that way about their publication, will likely have 3…

Just because a large percentage won't pay doesn't mean that putting the price high will maximise income. It's possible that at $10/month they'd get 5x the signups. That said, increasing prices is hard; reducing is easy. If you're trying to figure out sweet spot for max revenue is it probably makes sense to start high and slowly reduce it until you find it. If you're on a rolling monthly payment and decrease everyones…

> It's possible that at $10/month they'd get 5x the signups.

I highly doubt it. Also, while it is possible that the people at bloomberg are so incompetent that they did not consider how to maximize their profits, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say that they did.

Re: Subscription Hell

#49

Post by dang »

trimbo wrote: post #4
Semirhage wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of saying that on a popular site that does neither of those things should be lost on no one.

This site has employment ads for YC portfolio companies placed into the feed.

We also have Launch HNs for YC startups, which are like the job ads in that they get a placement on the front page to begin with. After that they behave like regular threads though.

Re: Subscription Hell

#50

Post by DontGiveTwoFlux »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #18

I am not sure why it is so fundamentally difficult for publications to understand what people want. The issue many people, myself included, have with subscriptions are that you pay $x / month whether or not you read that month's product. And whether or not you read every article or just one. So for me, as a consumer, my "price per article" goes from small to literally infinity (pay but read zero articles). Now the pa…

One con of the pay per article is that it siphons money into the money making kinds of stories. The sports and celebrity pages can do a lot of funding for the slow grind investigations that are important for holding those in power accountable.

It’s not like an a la carte model couldn’t also fund profitless journalism, but I think it might push things even more in that direction.

I think they do understand what people want, but they have a healthy, eat your vegetables kind of take on things too.

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