> Readers will never, ever pay. That's not sustainable and you need them to attract posters.
You guys on HN keep saying this.
I keep paying. I pay for the local newspaper that I disagree wildly with. I pay for one of the big national ones (that I could mostly read for free anyway). I pay for Spotify, for Linux magazines, a couple of donations to the Guardian and sometimes I pay for Netflix as well (rarely have time to watch and they "forget" to copy half their content to European servers.) In addition I've supported Wintergatan on YouTube lately.
I could even pay more if it wasn't that almost every newspaper and what not seems obsessed with the subscription idea, I cannot subscribe to all of you but I'd be happy to pay 1/4, 1/2 or even $1 for a single story that I want to read.
Am I alone? Is everyone else so "smart" to sit back with their adblockers, torrent clients and what not and just complain about how it seems to get worse?
Maybe that should be more narrowly read as “Twitter users will never pay” or “Facebook users will never pay” which is probably true because the simple reality is that these services offer low-value content that is cheap to produce and easy to consume. It’s not valuable so readers won’t pay.
Consumers do pay for valuable content like Netflix, New York Times, books, etc., because they actually take effort to produce and are thus actually valuable. Twitter and Facebook and much of the free Web is dreck that is not worth paying for.
Yes, sorry Social Media readers will not pay, because as you say the content they are consuming is mostly snippets of thought and links elsewhere, it's not the sort of service you'd subscribe to, but it is the sort of service lots of people like to use.
I do think there is a segment of users who would pay though - those who use the platform to broadcast and want to have a bit more control over their feeds/profile/comments.
You guys on HN keep saying this.
I keep paying. I pay for the local newspaper that I disagree wildly with. I pay for one of the big national ones (that I could mostly read for free anyway). I pay for Spotify, for Linux magazines, a couple of donations to the Guardian and sometimes I pay for Netflix as well (rarely have time to watch and they "forget" to copy half their content to European servers.) In addition I've supported Wintergatan on YouTube lately.
I could even pay more if it wasn't that almost every newspaper and what not seems obsessed with the subscription idea, I cannot subscribe to all of you but I'd be happy to pay 1/4, 1/2 or even $1 for a single story that I want to read.
Am I alone? Is everyone else so "smart" to sit back with their adblockers, torrent clients and what not and just complain about how it seems to get worse?