But it seems like one industry that has gotten this down is p*rnography? OnlyFans seems to be an enormous processor of micro-transactions for marginal content. Maybe people are just more willing to open wallets for that type of content?
It's interesting to see that even press "rebels" like Substack use a subscription model. You could argue this benefits writers with steady streams of incomes, and that per-purchase would incentivize clickbait and winner-take-all (not 100% sure I agree but could argue it). The more I think about it, the more concerned I am that subscriptions are a psychological trick where people (myself included lol) overly discount future dollars and over-estimate their ability to remember and cancel subscriptions.
Subscriptions create an incentive to keep consuming a particular resource, you don’t need that incentive if your audience already gets an oxytocin/dopamin kick just from seeing your face.
The other industries that got that right are far more morally questionable than pornography: Big Pharma and computer games.
The impression I've gotten from articles about OnlyFans is that the business model consists of a mix of monthly subscriptions and pay-per-view content on top of subscriptions, neither of which are typically priced at the levels that would be described as microtransactions. Is that not the case?