Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by jfengel | Hacker News Reader

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I feel like there's a gap in the "tip jar" market. I have a lot of podcasts for which I'd happily pay about 10 to 25 cents per episode, but it's not trivial to do. If it were, it would take a few thousand people to do so -- which isn't a small audience, but not enormous.

Currently there's a voluntary "if you like us, find us on Patreon". Even being able to provide a "connect to Patreon" button on the screen would be a boost. UX and web site designers are well aware of how many people you lose with each step. Such a button could also auto-switch to the ad-free stream; I once paid for the upgrade but managing the different feed was a pain.

I'm still using Pocket Casts, so it's possible that an integrated app like Stitcher is already doing that. If not, I see a niche that would make it easier for amateurs to scratch out a living. I think the money is there if you make it easy for people to give it.

This is the whole micropayment conundrum that Clay Shirky wrote about when it first reared its head during the original dot-com era. In principle, if most content were wired into some common payment system, the thought is that people would be willing to pay 5 cents for an article/podcast/etc.

In practice, the wiring of everything together, the establishment of pricing, and (Shirky's argument) the mental transaction costs of having to decide whether to make constant small purchases has made this model very elusive.

I think that since podcasts are often subscribed to, we might be able to mitigate the micropayment problem at least a bit. There are a lot of podcasts for which I'd be willing to pay, say, $10 per year -- though not enough to go through the trouble of finding and connecting to them on Patreon.

The thing is I dive in and out of podcasts. I don't want to subscribe. Plus I'd actually say that $10 is a fair bit for most podcasts over the course of a year. Maybe if there's one I'm particularly obsessed with. But not in general.

I wonder why Patreon doesn't have annual subscriptions.

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