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

Subscription Hell

techcrunch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

451–460 of 610 posts

Re: Subscription Hell

#451

Post by thirdsun »

philwelch wrote: post #400
nickjj wrote: post #143

For a lot of digital businesses a subscription makes sense. Imagine if back in the day Rails Casts was $3 an episode instead of $20 per month for unlimited monthly access. Suddenly if you wanted to learn Rails, you'd end up watching many dozens or hundreds of 5-10 minute videos for $3 a pop. You would constantly feel like you're being nickel and dimed. It's hard enough to get someone to buy from you once, but expecti…

Or you could pay $40 once for a book: https://smile.amazon.com/Rails-Way-Addison-Wesley-Profession... I think the greatest loss of the modern web has been this explicit move away from literacy. It's like the dark days of television are back again.

There's a place for both. While RailsCasts didn't aim to replace a detailed book, it undeniably featured a lot of very helpful and valuable content.

Re: Subscription Hell

#452

Post by vfaronov »

philwelch wrote: post #394
gkya wrote: post #154

> Today’s consumers though have significantly higher standards than the original users of the web. Consumers want immersive experiences, well-designed pages with fonts, graphics, photos, and videos coming together into a compelling format. Citation needed. This comes up quite often, and people like to assume they know what users want all the time. But is there actual, scientific evidence that, given the same content,…

There are hundreds (thousands?) of commercial content-heavy websites that continually track engagement metrics and A/B test design differences all the time, and virtually every single one of them has chosen to bet their collective livelihoods on richer and more interactive media.

The article isn’t merely arguing that users prefer rich content, other things being equal. It is arguing that users prefer paywalled rich content to free plain content. This is not the kind of thing typically measured by A/B testing.

Re: Subscription Hell

#453

Post by koliber »

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…

There is a difference between paying for tools that bring value, and discretionary spending.

If I am paying for software that I use to be more efficient and increases my profits, I am OK with a subscription model, or whatever model is offered. This is, as long as the cost of the software is considerably lower than the value bump I get from using it.

With discretionary spending, it takes a lot for me to buy a subscription. If I spend more than X% of a given month consuming what that subscription provides, I will consider buying it. Otherwise, I am fine not consuming that particular service at all.

I subscribe to a few magazines and Spotify. I read content online from many sources, but will not buy a subscription to each one of them. None of them are valuable enough for me to subscribe.

If there was a way to pay, say $20 per month, and have a set of credits that I could redeem at Washington Post, The Economist, New York Times, Bloomberg, etc, on a per-article basis (I make the decision after the first paragraph or two) I would jump at that right away. The system would need to be very user friendly and almost friction-free.

Re: Subscription Hell

#454

Post by Strom »

whatever1 wrote: post #9
scarface74 wrote: post #2

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

Was Bloomberg making $35 from ads from my 3 visits to their site per month? If not why do they ask me now for $35?

Bloomberg offers 10 articles for free, so it would seem that they aren't asking for $35 for 3 visits.

Re: Subscription Hell

#455

Post by marklgr »

freehunter wrote: post #192
beberlei wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

well, that is economics 101. consumers price goods by value, not by costs. if your costs are higher than consumers are willing to pay, then you will at some point go bankrupt.

Exactly. No one cares what the product costs to make, they care what it costs from their own pocket. If the app isn't worth $40, then it doesn't have the features and/or the polish to have multiple full-time developers working on it. If the price people are willing to pay is lower than your cost of goods sold, lower your COGS or raise your value proposition. Those are the only options.

> No one cares what the product costs to make

The production cost is one of the metrics customers use to decide if a price is fair or not, to them. There are other metrics, like the time that can be saved by using the product (ie. some way to quantify the product "use value"), but the production cost is often quite useful to detect abuses--and boy, aren't there a lot of attempts of such abuses.

Re: Subscription Hell

#456

Post by jcelerier »

twblalock wrote: post #359
gnicholas wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, not so much what consumers want as what succeeds on social media.

If people don't want it, why does it succeed on social media, or anywhere at all?

that's like saying roads are successful because many people are driving on them.

Re: Subscription Hell

#457

Post by culturestate »

mehrdadn wrote: post #434
notSupplied wrote: post #408

Earlier quoted context omitted.

New OS versions (especially from Apple) regularly create new bugs or completely break compatibility with old software. The cost of upkeep is not entirely predictable and easy to "price-in" to the upfront cost.

Can't speak for Apple I guess, but this isn't exactly the normal case on Windows.

Microsoft jumps through hoops for backwards compatibility, often to their own detriment. Apple - comparatively, not absolutely - almost ignores backwards compatibility...also often to their own detriment.

Re: Subscription Hell

#458

Post by tallanvor »

carapace wrote: post #57
Legogris wrote: post #15

A standard for micropayment for content needs to evolve. Our relationships to publishers have changed substantially. I would be willing to pay per read from sources like The Guardian, New York Times, The Economist, etc, but I am not frequent enough to want to subscribe. For the citizen who wants to get their information from different sources across the globe and political spectrum, it gets unreasonable to expect sub…

The fact that "micropayments" weren't even mentioned in this article leads me to dismiss it. There still doesn't seem to be a "Twitter of Micropayments" yet. Gratipay shut down, (RIP) https://gratipay.news/the-end-cbfba8f50981?gi=54bc4ed25327 Patreon takes a percentage, which, to me, seems unjustifiable.

So how should Patreon pay for their staff, infrastructure, and other costs if taking a percentage is unjustifiable?

Re: Subscription Hell

#459

Post by DrScump »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #334
rolleiflex wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that always rubbed me wrong about this is that, logically speaking, if you buy a license for a year, the perpetual fallback license should be the version you had at the end of the license, not the one that was on the market at the beginning of it. It doesn't really make sense the way they do it, and it feels like a particularly hamfisted attempt to grab an almost negligible amount of money, so I'm puzzled.

Slightly off topic, but semi related. My parents had a one year membership at Costco. The level where you get some percentage back. I think it was 2%. Long to short, the "rebate" was paid ~60 days prior to the end of the 12 months. The remaining 60 days' purchased will only be rebated if they renew. I presume this is in the small print somewhere. None the less, it's complete crap.

It's not "complete crap" given that (a) it's in the paperwork they are given at signup time, and (b) if they are genuinely dissatisfied, they can downgrade back to basic membership and get refunded retroactively to the start of the membership year for the difference in cost of the higher membership.

Re: Subscription Hell

#460

Post by DrScump »

around_here wrote: post #421
brandonjm wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I bought a copy of Office 2016 when it came out, it has now lasted me 2 years and I paid about the same as 2 years worth of Office 365. I intend to keep using it until it is no longer supported at all and I am sure I will have saved quite a bit of money for effectively the same product.

I got Office 2003 and it works for all of the home based stuff that I do now. I paid $70 on a sale. If I had been doing 365 since then at $48/year, I'm looking at $720.

I got LibreOffice.
Post reply on HN