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Comment by jay_kyburz | Hacker News Reader

I'm with Buffoon on this one.

Trying to convince somebody they want to buy something by bombarding them with ads on every web page is shitty. I don't want to be exposed to it. I don't want my kids exposed to it.

Then to build your content business on top of the shitty advertising industry that seems kind of a bad idea.

I think if people want your content they will pay. Publishers just need to bundle it the right way.

And I've said it a few times here on HN, but if we as a society think news and current affairs is important, we shouldn't trust it to commercial organisations driven by profit, we need independent, publicly funded news like Australia's ABC.

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> I think if people want your content they will pay. Publishers just need to bundle it the right way.

This is incredibly difficult to do and all the attempts I am aware of have 'failed' by varying degrees (paywalls, app.net).

If ad-blocking becomes a trend, I hope the websites as the blockers to pay instead of resorting to "native ads" or going out of business. Hopefully, the internet won't be stratified (rich vs. poor peoples versions of the web), but who am I kidding - happens in all other industries.

However, my opinion is likely coloured by my circumstances: I am a biased 3rd-worlder. I'd prefer the status-quo and have the content I consume subsidised by ads targeted at the western middle class. I would not afford to pay for all the content I find interesting on the internet, especially now with the horrendous USD exchange rate.

So Paywalls and app.net failed. I can think of heaps of better ideas for packaging news and other content.

I would like to see some of the lessons we have learnt about Freemium applied to news.

First you have a base level of great content available for free for everybody. You build a very large user base. Then for those people who want to dig deeper, you have premium content. Those users who really value your service won't mind spending a little money to engage more. Those who engage a lot - pay a lot, but it's their hobby, their past time. they don't mind.

It sound horrible when you spell it out explicitly, but like everything you need present well.

10c to read an article 1 hour earlier than everybody else. 10c to comment on an article. 5c to read the full transcripts of interviews. 10c to download full res photos. 5c to read full bio's of the people involved in the article.

You could spend $20 a day interacting / socialising / enjoying your news and entertainment.

I'm fairly certain this has all been tried. The New York Times and many other news outlets do have a freemium model of sorts. You are allowed access to 10 news articles a month, and after you reach your limit you can pay for more.

Guess how many people subscribe to the Times and are willing to actually pay to read another article? <830,000 worldwide. Paywalls have been implemented, monetization models have been tweaked - you can't change habits. People are habituated to getting their content online for free. They're not willing to pay for it in the vast majority of cases.

If we're talking online news content, there's just a ton of different outlets and I don't see people being willing to pay individually on an article-by-article basis. Maybe if you aggregated content under one subscription model (like the music industry does wit Spotify, Apple Music, etc.) and distributed revenue to publishers based on readership, it could work for a small minority of consumers. But even that seems like a stretch.

Ok, I just went and had a look at the Times website you minimum subscription is around $80USD a year but you can up to around 500USD a year. Lets round 800,000 at 100US a year is 80MM right?

Thats a shit tone of journalists employed if you ask me.

If you actually read the article, it says that the NY Times' operating costs were $1.48 Billion last year. $80 Million would cover a very minor portion of that.

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