Comment by notatoad 9 hours ago
The PPV model has been tried a bunch of times, and it always turns out that the rate people are willing to pay per view is not a rate that is high enough to be a viable revenue source for the content owners.
it takes a lot of $0.10-$0.25 views to make up for the loss of a $5/month recurring revenue stream that might last for years.
The fact that advertising is more profitable doesn't mean that the PPV model is not viable. It could certainly be so. Every site could set their own price, or specific tiers, which users can agree to, just like they do with subscription-based content today.
The problem is skewed incentives, of course. Advertising is acceptable to most users and easy to integrate, so why should website authors go out of their way to please a minority of their users who object to it?
>Every site could set their own price, or specific tiers, which users can agree to, just like they do with subscription-based content today.
you're describing the model of a product called blendle, a service which i loved but which totally failed. they failed to attract users, and they failed to attract publishers. this isn't some new idea that nobody had tried. it's been done. and it failed, not just for blendle. people have tried micropayments, they've tried subscriptions, if you can imagine a PPV model, it's probably been tried. readers and publishers both hate it.
Do you think the fact that NO major content websites (NYT, substack, WSJ, ...) have settled on a PPV model is simply because they haven't thought of it? Or is it more likely that the numbers absolutely do not work?
No one uses the PPV model because there isn't sufficient payment infrastructure (402 payment required). The friction for entering your credit card information into a website is ridiculous, you might as well target the high end of the market with a monthly subscription.
The PPV model, like Ads, works well for websites that you're not well associated with. Random blogs and websites that you otherwise wouldn't be willing to share your credit card info with.
That's a false dichotomy.
I can't speak for all web sites, but I reckon a combination of factors could explain why such a solution hasn't been deployed:
1. Advertising is ubiquitous, easy to integrate, and provides a safe revenue stream.
2. There is little to no infrastructure for the PPV model. Whoever builds it would need to maintain their own version of it.
3. People expect the web to be "free". This is even true within technical crowds who understand that it's really not free. And a large part of that group doesn't mind advertising.
So, really, it would require a substantial amount of effort to implement, it would add additional friction to users, and ultimately only a minority would appreciate it.
Had this model been in place from the beginning of the web, things might be different today. Alas, if my grandma had wheels...
Have any of them actually tried it though? If they have and I missed it, then I apologize, but I can't recall the NYT letting me read an article for $1 with zero friction via Apple or Google Pay or Stripe link or something. It they tried it and the numbers didn't work, that's one thing, but I don't recall that happening.
Doing it via conventional card networks won't work, the fees would eat most/all of the payment.
A critical mass of publishers would need to team up and form a cooperative/etc where a user could register once, deposit some money, and then that money would be spent every time they view an article. But that requires cooperation between competitors, which is already hard enough, and the cancer that is the advertising industry wouldn't like this potential existential threat and would be more than happy to pour fuel onto the fire to ensure it never succeeds.
What's surprising is why the card networks themselves don't get in on it. They could do so in a completely backwards-compatible manner, introducing a new card number range that only works with transactions under a certain amount and have different fraud protection/chargeback rules.
WSJ was available on blendle (pay-per-view microtransactions). Washington Post was available on scroll (monthly subscription, divided up amongst the publishers you read each month). neither service still exists.
i don't believe NYT has ever tried a pay-per-view model.
I wrote about this exact problem last year. To anyone who disagrees, would you pay me 5 cents to click on the following link?
https://sheep.horse/2024/11/on_micropayments.html