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Comment by bjoernw | Hacker News Reader

Companies like https://coil.com are solving this by giving you a single $5/month subscription and then streaming micropayments to the content creators as you consume their content. It builds on the WebMonitization standard https://webmonetization.org

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Maybe I'm wrong. I do hope the model works. But all I can think of when I see their business model is Spotify. Where content creators are being paid cents, and have to rely on alternative streams of income like concert and merch. Except in this case, there is no alternative, the patron model was supposed to be the alternative to ads and sponsorship.

I do wonder how much can be contributed to the content creator, even without considering the cut they take for their services. If I'm watching more than 5 content creators in the month, then they're getting less than a dollar each.

There have been countless attempts to create a micropayments ecosystem during the last 20 years, and they have all flopped. What makes this different?

Coil and Mozilla working on a web standard together, the fact that we now have a couple of years of examples of digital content creators being de-monitized on ad-supported platforms, and the fact that crypto currencies are more approachable now.

This seems similar to what Brave is doing. I would like to see a side-by-side comparison of the two. For example I know that Brave pays users for watching ads, for example.

There are alternatives being built around direct micropayments to authors, such as https://read.cash. It's a click to send any amount from $0.01 and up, and the wallets are non-custodial, so money goes straight to the creator, minus a fee for the website. This might be a solution to the fatigue described by article, as you pay especifically by the content you like, and you decide the amount.

> This seems similar to what Brave is doing. I would like to see a side-by-side comparison of the two. For example I know that Brave pays users for watching ads, for example.

Personally, I've never earned enough BAT in a month to pay out creators what I would actually owe them. In fact, I've tried to research why I'm not earning BAT even though I theoretically should be. I don't know what's up. I guess I'm just not being shown ads. That's one thing about BAT that's bad. It all depends on this one centralized ad ecosystem. If people aren't buying ads on the BAT network, then you won't get served ads and you won't make money.

In any case, I don't know if the Coil economics work, but at least all these $5 subs are sustainable and reliable.

I was just coming here to make this comment.

The Web Monetization standard is the solution to the problem described of wanting to support a lot of creators effortlessly. There are many creators I want to support, but don't want to deal with managing a unique subscription to them—and also don't want to support them with a minimum $5/month.

My only issue with Coil (and I suspect why it hasn't taken off) is because XRP seems extremely scammy (pre-mined, centralized, etc).

I'd love to see WebMonitization work with at least 1 other coin besides XRP. Supposedly Interledger works with any coin, but I'll believe it when I see it.

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