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Comment by noir-york | Hacker News Reader

I like what they're doing - I do not want to take out a full subscription to all the possible news sources just to read a couple of articles a month.

However, their "iTunes for Journalism" model is not the best one; "Spotify for journalism" is better: fixed monthly price and all you can eat. I do not want to expend the mental energy thinking about whether an article is worth the 0.25c.

Blendle also has to recognize that the value is different - you can replay a song many times, but an article loses value very quickly - read it once, maybe go back to it for reference, and that's it. Pricing needs to take this into account.

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It certainly adds some cognitive overhead to the user.

I think a solution might be buying credits, e.g. you have bronze/silver/gold credits, and each article could be priced at 1 bronze/silver/gold credit (because the price being e.g. 3 credits would keep the overhead). This layer of abstraction removes the user from thinking in terms of money (e.g. this article cost 0.25 euro), a bit.

In terms of monthly subscription, I would assume pricing articles individually makes it easy to deal with the publishers? X people read it at price of $Y, so you get X*$Y minus some fee, can't get any easier. It would get much more tricky if trying to split the monthly cost.

We thought about credits. It might work, I'm doubting about this one because if feels a bit user-unfriendly to make it less transparant. What do you think?

I much prefer the transparency of an actual price. The cognitive overhead of converting credits in your head to euro is much higher, and I suspect most of us do so anyways (I know I do at festivals, for example, at least until a certain level of inebriation).

Furthermore, credits can come across as a bit 'sleazy' to the consumer. Every person I know assumes that, in general, credit-based systems are implemented to make more money (again, festivals: I just want another beer, not buy another ten credits if I just need one more to get my fucking drink!).

I agree. Credits wouldn't make it any more careless, only more tedious. I think only 'an all you can eat' would be a more attractive system than the current one.

Though, it seems to me that even in the current model what is missing are very strong network effects. It would be interesting to see if adding additional incentives increases/improves sharing. For instance, what if an article becomes free after N friends read it after sharing? It might cause people to share articles that their social circles are very likely to read.

Another interesting feature would be a share-once link. Sometimes you read an article that you want to share with someone specifically. You don't want to be an *ss pointing them to a paywall, so you pay the Euro 0.25 for them :). It's not only a convenience, but also a potential way to bring in new customers.

After giving more thoughts... Yeah, credits certainly have a bad reputation so you might lose some credibility from the user point of view.

In addition, if you have tiers of credits (so you have 3 distinct credits, rather than just replacing euro sign with a credit sign), you lose plenty of flexibility.

So yeah, I can see why you rejected this option :)

Blendle co-founder here. I must admit that micropayments sounds exhausting when you think about the model. But we really tried to make the UX very pleasant, and I think we succeeded (and about 1/5 of the users who register take out their credit card and top up, so apparently they agree :)). But, at the same time, prices should be fair. We're always looking at refund percentages to make sure that they stay fair.

Thanks for taking the time! An all you can eat Spotify like model removes all friction and allows me, as someone who loves to explore new content, to not have to worry at all about refunds or such stuff.

I am sure you are operating under constraints with the publishers but I do strongly encourage you to push for a fixed monthly model: by removing all "barriers to entry" of viewing an article, users can freely explore new content from new authors and publishers.

Regarding pricing, a song takes many man-hours to produce. Consider the man-hours that go into an article and the fact that a song can be replayed many times. Sure it must be fair but 0.25c per article is not sustainable for me considering the amount of content I consume.

I am subscribed to a number of magazines (Economist, Foreign Affairs, Private Eye and a couple of news papers) which I know I will read. But others (New Statesman, Spectator, FT) I only care to read an article or so a month; with a fixed monthly I can view all the publications using your service, with per-article pricing I would only consider you for the "long-tail" articles/publications. And frankly, I can safely assume that you much prefer that I read all the content on your platform...

I would agree if not for the fact that their money-back policy is so lenient (and easy to use) that it feels like you're not paying up-front at all. As such, I much prefer the iTunes model over the Spotify model, as I'd much rather occasionally click on the 'money back' button than pay for stuff I don't read.

Its lenient, for now. But I view it as a workaround to the no-mental-cost of an all you can eat. With a fixed-monthly model you do not ever need to think about asking for your money back. Let alone asking for it, even if its a click.

A fixed monthly cost is in the interest of everyone: by removing the "barrier to entry" of an article it removes any friction for someone to explore new content and new sources. New publishers win, new authors win and all users win.

>A fixed monthly cost is in the interest of everyone

Subscriptions are only great for users if they get enough value out of them--otherwise they're just another monthly/annual money leak. For example, I go back and forth on the streaming music services. I'll use them to explore some new music or play something I want to hear but don't own--but then I'll be traveling or otherwise occupied and won't use them for 2 or 3 weeks.

Exactly. Ideally I'd see both. Subscriptions for those who make enough use of Blendle and on a consistent basis, and micropayments for people like me who will occasionally read an article that interests them.

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