The End of My Paid Subscription Content Experiment | Hacker News Reader

The End of My Paid Subscription Content Experiment

feld.com

19 pointsrazin8 comments

Interesting thoughts about the psychology of the writer - how s/he's affected by the "payment" or "firewall" status of the site. Feld's reactions match what I've sort of expected from myself if in a write-for-fee mode.

Most other discussions have been geared toward the reader's reaction. I think the impact on authors is equally significant (and might need to be addressed differently?).

I think you need to come at it more from the mindset that it's a small amount of money that people don't mind losing if it doesn't turn out, then you can be more natural and unfiltered about your thoughts. I think it also helps to think of the small payments people are paying as allowing you a little more freedom in having the experiences and thought which you are writing about.

I like this explanation of using letterly: http://rosshill.com.au/letterly/

I highlight text as I read and found the highlighter popup very distracting and annoying.

I do this too and stay off NYT for that reason.

Also my girlfriend doesn't watch me read for the same reason :)

The highlighter would have killed my interest if not for readability. It is incredibly annoying to read any decent portion of consistent text with the highlighter turned on.

While I find it admirable that the author wants to charge for quality content it really isn't his decision what is worthy of being paid for. It is his audience who is the final arbitrator of what is worth their $1.99 a month.

There are after all a ton of shitty things being bought and sold for much more.

i like the idea of paid content and wish it were more abundant on the web. for example, i would pay Venkatesh Rao to hurry up with more posts in his Gervais Principle series and i am glad to pay $5 per. actually, come to think of it, $5 seems like a lot.. $2 for a bad one and $5 for a good one, all right.

I think a lot of people balk because the nominal cost of content online is "free", including content that is supposed to cost money, ala BT.

I don't have a problem with paid content but I'm never sure if it'll be worth it, because I find testimonials honestly less then useless (I mistrust them) and I can't check a physical 'thing' before I buy.

I do like the idea of variable pricing, perhaps a cost to enter then a fixed variable cost for your "enthusiasm" for that content?

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