Hacker News Reader

Comment by octo_t | Hacker News Reader

Nice to compare the comments here with https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11222499 ("Show HN: Let's encourage ad blocking").

People don't want to pay for content, but they also don't want to see ads...

View on HN

Which makes it tough for publishers, but ultimately it's their responsibility to create a product that people do want to pay for. (The existence of reddits like /r/shutupandtakemymoney shows that this happens all the time.) The beauty of the internet is that there are so many sources for so many things, I can almost always go someplace free for whatever it is I seek.

I'll pay for content, but the value has to be there. And in this age of click bait headlines, non researched articles of no susbstance or value, I'm not about to pay for someone's low value opinions. Sure they have value, but it's like $0.02 of value. And it's not scarce. When everyone can create content and publish, and many are willing to do it for free to create their own brand, it creates a market where ideas and words are not monetizable. I don't even mind ads, when done right. A trailer for a movie I want to see is an ad, and I'll seek it out when I want the content. But ad agencies have done this to themselves by becoming a virus on content pages.

Besides, why should I have to pay? I create and consume something far more valuable in the form of OSS. No ads, no price.

To say monetization has to be ads or paywalls is excluding hundreds of other ways to monetize content. It's lazy, and won't succeed in the information era.

Most people who are reading Medium or are on the internet are broke or in massive debt (cough Millennials).

They can barely afford rent and food.

If you want to monetize you need to either make medium for baby-boomers or change your govt.

People prioritise different things, I see homeless people with smartphones. We live in an information age, and people value information.

Do you think homeless people are homeless with smartphone because they value a smartphone MORE then housing ?

Or is it because the cost of a smartphone is 1/100 of a month's rent in a shitty apartment.

Or to put it in another way - they can afford a smartphone but cannot afford housing.

Smartphones are incredibly cheap these days compared to the price of content. They've gone on sale for as little as $10, and you can easily pay that for just one month's subscription to one website.

What people seem to not value are the channels that produce information. Information has become ubiquitous, ephemeral and most often freely available through any other arbitrary channel. For pay walls to work, it's an all-or-nothing system.

Not really.

Information is more valuable then ever.

I would rather pay 10 dollars for Netflix then torrent.

But guess why I do not pay 10 dollars for Netflix ?

Because Netflix is shit for me. Since I do not live in the US.

The hassle of going to a torrent site and deal with porn ads is cheaper and better then streaming from Netflix.

Since 10 dollar is 45 minutes of working as a programmer - I spend less then 10 minutes a month having to deal with porn ads. Its basic economics. Unless it takes me 45 minutes of porn ad watching I am not going to switch to Netflix - as simple as that.

And guess why I get paid 10 dollars ?

Due to the broken immigration Laws which gives employers an upper hand as I get deported as soon as I lose my job.

Some of the basic needs of life - housing,food - costs me 1/4 of my salary.

And I am at the upper end of the scale - most of my peers are working in coffee shops in shitty service jobs.

Unless this basic calculus change - good luck monetizing selling articles on the web.

-- from a frustrated millennial --

That is a classic example people repeat a lot. But think about it, if you had literally no money, no skills, no job, and a mental illness, how would you spend $100? A phone that provides you internet access and unlimited information and resources, or $100 for 2 nights in a hotel?

My thoughts exactly. So, how is Medium supposed to survive?

I'm not preaching. I'm at least partially in the same boat. I think ads have gotten nearly abusive and I am not sure how much content I'm actually willing to pay for.

The problem for guys like Medium is that there is still an abundance of free content that can be ad blocked, so people will just move elsewhere. So, it seems that lower quality content providers will simply go out of business and the higher quality will shift to paid (provided they can stay in business long enough). Once there are fewer quality choices and most require pay, people will be more willing to pay.

In the meantime, it's a tough business to be in.

Well sometimes it's a matter of thresholds. Someone upthread was talking about millenials – as a matter of fact we balk at spending any money on online content.

This added to the fact that Medium is basically a glorified blogging platform makes me not want to pay for it. Seriously, if you were to ask me or anyone else back in 2006 what would be the hot new area for monetizing in 10 years, I doubt anyone would have said "blogging with paywalls".

I think that it is lose lose situation with the paid content, at least with current state of online payments.

With paid content you lose your privacy and you lose your anonymity and you become more easily targetable and more attractive to the ads.

If we take the paper magazines then there are the ads, and you pay for it. I believe the same will happen with the online publishing.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com