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Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016

niemanlab.org

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Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016

#4

Post by vincentkriek »

There are a lot of numbers coming out of Blendle but I would like to know what actual revenue Blendle is getting. I don't believe the micropayment method is the way to go and I see more value in payed subscription model. I think a lot of the numbers they publish include people in free trials or people buying one or two articles and that's it.

Blendle's got a lot of hype behind it, I wonder if it's really taking of.

Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016

#6

Post by intopieces »

JeanMertz wrote: post #2

Our founder, Alexander, just announced this on Business Insider's IGNITION event. You can add yourself to our beta invite list at https://launch.blendle.com . We're really looking forward to next year! Let me know if you have any questions.

Do you require users to purchase a certain number of credits up front after the trial? I see you offer refunds if you don't like the story. What prevents a person from just reading all they like and then asking for a refund? Is it possible to copy and paste text from the articles to share on social media? (I assume you have a share mechanism, but this is more specific). Once I pay for the article, does it stay in my account forever, or could it be pulled by the publisher?

The service looks very interesting, and I look forward to trying it.

Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016

#7

Post by JeanMertz »

intopieces wrote: post #6
JeanMertz wrote: post #2

Our founder, Alexander, just announced this on Business Insider's IGNITION event. You can add yourself to our beta invite list at https://launch.blendle.com . We're really looking forward to next year! Let me know if you have any questions.

Do you require users to purchase a certain number of credits up front after the trial? I see you offer refunds if you don't like the story. What prevents a person from just reading all they like and then asking for a refund? Is it possible to copy and paste text from the articles to share on social media? (I assume you have a share mechanism, but this is more specific). Once I pay for the article, does it stay in my…

Interesting questions.

Re: Do you require users to purchase a certain number of credits up front after the trial?

The "trial" is really $2,50 that we give you upon signup. You get another $2,50 after your first "top up". We show the prices in your own currency, so no "credits", but top-ups start at $5, and go up from there. You can choose to auto-topup when your wallet drops below $0.

Re: I see you offer refunds if you don't like the story. What prevents a person from just reading all they like and then asking for a refund?

The refund mechanism is an important tool to generate trust with the reader. We don't want you to feel "nickel-and-dimed" and if publisher promised a certain article through the heading and intro, but didn't live up to those expectations after reading the article, we encourage you to refund, and tell the publishers why you asked a refund (through a dialog), so publishers can learn as well.

We have certain mechanisms in place to prevent abuse of this system, but we're lenient, and in general we see only about 10% of purchases are refunded this way.

Re: Is it possible to copy and paste text from the articles to share on social media? (I assume you have a share mechanism, but this is more specific).

You can. Again, it's built on a mutual-trust system. So far it has worked out great, if we ever notice the balance tipping, we'll have to tweak the system.

Re: Once I pay for the article, does it stay in my account forever, or could it be pulled by the publisher?

It does stay in your account. We don't have any mechanism to actually remove articles from our platform. Highly occasionally, we remove the content of an article, because it was published by accident (f.e. a newspaper delivering next days newspaper too early, and it containing the score of a pre-recorded contest).

Re: Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016

#8

Post by thetmkay »

vincentkriek wrote: post #4

There are a lot of numbers coming out of Blendle but I would like to know what actual revenue Blendle is getting. I don't believe the micropayment method is the way to go and I see more value in payed subscription model. I think a lot of the numbers they publish include people in free trials or people buying one or two articles and that's it. Blendle's got a lot of hype behind it, I wonder if it's really taking of.

I spent a week or two looking into and evaluating micro payments for news, and I share your concerns.

The line I hear out of Blendle though is that it's part of an ecosystem, i.e. one avenue of payment options. I can imagine a one-off paywall working for some content, but I doubt it will be the dominant method of choice.

Newspapers are only half entertainment, but the entertainment industry pivoted from per-product to aggregated subscription in the age of the Internet. Of course Blendle itself is a platform, tweaking its business model should be within scope.

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