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Comment by imron | Hacker News Reader

The problem is not that it is hard to compete with free, but rather it's inconvenient to make small payments to people you think provide value.

Not to mention no-one wants to sign up with their credit card info to a few dozen different sites just to do that.

An automated system built in to the browser that bills a user determined amount monthly and apportions that to sites based on usage solves most of that.

How much would you pay a month to have no advertising and no invasive tracking on the web and support content that you like?

I'd be happy to spend $5-10 dollars doing that - I'm already spending $60 a month just for Internet access in the first place. If enough people sign on to that, and enough creators can use that as a revenue model then it will provide a way to fund content without the need for advertising.

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I have a PayPal tip jar. You can give as little as a dollar.

It isn't exactly raking in the dough. Most people just do not want to pay. The lack of a convenient means to pay small sums is an excuse to justify that. If it weren't, I should have more income.

If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400.

But, no. Most people don't go "That totally enriched my life. I shall give a dollar for this info."

Using PayPal gives you my email address. I understand I'm probably a minority in this, but I don't tend to give that out anywhere on the web and I don't like that I can't hide it from the recipient on PayPal. No I don't care what you're "allowed" to do with it, it only takes one bad actor

That said, I don't think there are any sites I really frequent any more [though HN is one I scan often], I've not noticed PP tip jars on the small number of sites I browse.

Thank you. I appreciate you at least addressing an issue.

Do you know of any means to pay money online anonymously? I really don't.

I guess cryptocurrency is theoretically supposed to do that, but it seems more like weird speculation than an actual online currency. I haven't pursued it because it doesn't seem like a genuine means to get paid.

I had a paypal donate button on a piece of software I created and gave away for free. Over 5 years, I could count on my hands the number of people who donated. If I had a dollar for every time it was downloaded I would have been making a comfortable developer salary over that time, but hardly anyone donated despite the value it brought them.

Then I changed it from a donate button next to the download button to a 'pay what you want' button (including $0) that you have to click before downloading.

It was the exact same link to PayPal, but I made more in the first month of having that up than I did in the preceding 5 years.

It's all about friction. A dollar or not, a PayPal payment is high friction.

> If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400.

You don't realise it, but you're essentially advocating for brave's payment system right there

Imagine every visitor to your site paid you a small amount based on how much they visited, and it was all automated and frictionless so that the user didn't have to click anything - they'd just visit read an article and you'd just get paid. That's what brave is trying to build. If you're getting 40k views for your articles, check out their docs for publishers: https://brave.com/publishers/

That's not the norm for my traffic, but it has happened.

Are you already paying money into Brave? Or is this still some hand wavy theory that someday it might pay someone?

Not yet. I only found out about it recently (in the last month) when they held a token giveaway.

So I have $5 of credit from that which will (according to them) be paid out to creators after a month. After that I will likely pay in to it because I want to support the ecosystem.

Thank you.

I tend to avoid Paypal because they forward unknown personal info to the merchant. And they're assholes, especially to small merchants.

Maybe people did not perceive whatever they viewed on your site to be worth anything to them? A visit is neither a sign of actual relevant interest nor an endorsement.

Yes, that's why the entire internet cannot figure out how to adequately monetize content and articles about the problems with ads pop up routinely on HN: because one lone blogger is a putz producing nothing of value and blaming others for it.

I am willing to use my experience to cast light on this issue. But I do not appreciate people then turning that into a chance to take pot shots at me personally.

My point is that every single time these discussions come up, people say they would like a means to monetize content that fits X parameters. Those parameters include low friction of use, widespread accessibility and micro payments. So I created a tip jar using the most well established payment system on the internet and made the lowest payment amount just a dollar.

I rarely get a dollar. Most people willing to pay anything give more than that.

My firsthand experience suggests that this list of criteria people put forth is merely an excuse and they aren't really willing to pay anything.

Because I hear this list of criteria endlessly and I have met them all to the best of my ability with current tech by making a PayPal tip jar available. I do get some tips. But I have also become convinced that the people in these discussions listing all the reasons they don't pay while using an as blocker are just giving excuses. The truth is they won't pay.

This is the crux of the problem. Ads are how you monetize content when no one wants to pay for it. It is how TV content was originally monetized.

And if most people simply are unwilling to pay, then you have your answer: ads are here to stay because it is the only way to reliably monetize content.

If people find ads so evil and objectionable, actually opening up their wallets and paying for subscriptions, Patreon support, tips, etc is the way to get content producers to drop ads. But most people don't actually want to do that.

> I'd be happy to spend $5-10 dollars doing that - I'm already spending $60 a month just for Internet access in the first place. If enough people sign on to that, and enough creators can use that as a revenue model then it will provide a way to fund content without the need for advertising.

I think herein lies the crux of the problem - the solution of a pay-on-visit system requires further curation by a populous that probably just isn't willing or eager to do so. Imagine such a solution a year down the line when it's fully implemented, and now people are complaining about death by a thousand papercuts, as every article suddenly begins to optimize for pay per view. We already have complaints about slideshows that load up fresh ads on 14 pages, 2 of which are actual ads instead of content; imagine how frustrating it would be to put a real dollar value on every day browsing of content. It will just encourage centralization more, imo, as agglomerating sites can take the hit and present content for free while individual content creators will struggle even more.

Everyone hates advertising, but there are ways of doing it appropriately. The ethical considerations on advertising aside, the system itself provides a useful exchange for content creators and their audience. The problem lies in the third party here, the advertisers, and how much free reign they've been given over what an ad can do once it's loaded. The resale value of private information is probably worth more than the return on investment for the ad itself in the long run, and that's a major problem, because the audience loses out on privacy (and often security) as a result, and the content creator never sees the benefit of the resale value. The imbalance of power is too great here, and current regulatory attempts (Cookie banners) have no teeth and are ineffectual.

I really don't think the answer for most people is an extra $10-$20 a month on micropayments. I think the natural conclusion of such a system is further entrenching Facebook/Google and other such social media giants.

I think instead wrangling advertising into a system which more fairly compensates the content creator and respects user privacy is the right way to go, but at this point that's not happening without heavy intervention/regulation with some teeth to make it really hurt.

Edit: Corrected "balance of power" to "imbalance of power"

> imagine how frustrating it would be to put a real dollar value on every day browsing of content

Sure, but the user is in control of that to some degree with how it's currently implemented in Brave. I can choose to exclude sites from receiving payment and I can also choose to award a greater proportion of my monthly spending to specific sites of my choosing.

If a site is engaging in dark-patterns to attract my money, then no money for them.

> I think the natural conclusion of such a system is further entrenching Facebook/Google and other such social media giants.

Browsers will be able to work around that though once they establish that a certain site is behaving like a walled garden. Brave already does this with Youtube. Rather than payments going to the entire site, Brave attributes views and viewing time to the individual channels you watch. If some other megasite has a significant amount of individual content creators I'd imagine they'd do a similar thing.

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