I did some investigation on this as part of a college project. Some news sites have tried it and it doesn't work. It seems that people won't pay to access an article without first understanding if they would find it valuable. It also encourages click bait type headlines, which isn't great. - ThreadSky

bloomfield.co • 150 days ago

I did some investigation on this as part of a college project.

Some news sites have tried it and it doesn't work. It seems that people won't pay to access an article without first understanding if they would find it valuable.

It also encourages click bait type headlines, which isn't great.

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emilykerr36.bsky.social•150 days ago

Interesting. Do you think this might have changed now social media exists? (Depends how long ago your project was!). Eg the scenario when I most want to access FT articles is when someone I trust on here says “read this article”.

bloomfield.co•150 days ago

This was about 7 or 8 years ago, and I only looked at it briefly.

To process micro payments requires a low friction process. Not sure people want to enter their credit card details every time they want to read an article.

And frictionless processing through Apple/Google pay is expensive.

bloomfield.co•150 days ago

There's an element of financial security for a news organisation as well.

If they can say, we have 100,000 subscribers paying £10 a month, that's better for financial planning than saying we have 2 million article views a mont that might earn 50p each.

bloomfield.co•150 days ago

I do like that the NYT has a 'gift article' that subscribers can use on social media to allow others to see it without the paywall.

bloomfield.co•150 days ago

Subscribing to the news is also not always about buying access. Sometimes it's about saying "I believe in this news source, and I'm prepared to subscribe to ensure it's ongoing viability". That's how The Guardian operates without a paywall.

wandrme.paxex.aero•150 days ago

Also, the cost of processing the financial transactions (fixed base charge plus % of total) is higher that one might think, so that 50p payment will likely net the publisher much less than that.

emilykerr36.bsky.social•150 days ago

Yes can see that

ian.spennys.world•149 days ago

I think it is a question of the price being right. A newspaper is made up of 100s of articles so charging 50p to read one isn't going to hack it. Charge pennies, then I'll pay and risk the article being crap.

There are substack people expecting you to blindly hand over £££ for unknown content.

snapper62.bsky.social•150 days ago

Interesting, we bought newspapers not knowing what was in them

dankeshet.bsky.social•149 days ago

You didn't buy individual articles from some far-away paper though. You made a decision once a year to renew your local paper because you got good value last year.

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