<story><title>Letting users skip our paywall if they wrote an apology</title><url>https://www.kapwing.com/blog/skipping-our-paywall-with-an-apology</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Aloha</author><text>Online micropayments is still a woefully untouched market, it was supposed to be the wave of the future some years ago, but never went anywhere.&lt;p&gt;I won&amp;#x27;t pay 10 dollars a month (each) to the NYT (LAT, WaPo, et al) for a subscription I might quite happily pay 5 to 20 cents for an article though. I can see a service that functions a lot like EZPass, you load your account with 5-10 bucks, you agree to pay by clicking a payment button on a landing page on a website, the rest is mostly automatic, require more than just a click thru for anything larger than say, 25 cents. You could even set it up so it doesn&amp;#x27;t prompt you to pay until you&amp;#x27;re more than half way thru too.&lt;p&gt;Yes, It&amp;#x27;d take some doing to build infrastructure and get content providers online, but it would eliminate a lot of the mechanics of paying for news, information, online media and other like content (as well as many of the privacy and practical concerns of ad based content payment).&lt;p&gt;The big thing is to make it content agnostic, it can&amp;#x27;t be part of apple, google, facebook, whatever, it needs to be something that functions just as a payment&amp;#x2F;escrow service, not part of some other media empire - part of the utility of such a service is universality. I&amp;#x27;d also steer clear of person to person payments, large transactions, pretty much just be a one-trick-pony (at least until you have wide penetration), and only go after small payments - all of those other markets are well served by a multitude of providers, and would serve as a distraction from the primary product.</text></item><item><author>shash7</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t think of it as asking for 1 dollar. Think like this:&lt;p&gt;Say if you walk up to me irl and ask for a dollar, I&amp;#x27;ll be like, sure here&amp;#x27;s your change and open up my wallet.&lt;p&gt;Online, asking for one dollar is too much mental overhead. Its not like people don&amp;#x27;t want to pay, but you need to make it easy for them to pay you.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would stick with ad revenue instead of 1 dollar payments.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>tome</author><text>&amp;gt; I won&amp;#x27;t pay 10 dollars a month (each) to the NYT (LAT, WaPo, et al) for a subscription&lt;p&gt;What about a Spotify model for articles where you pay a monthly subscription to access all articles from the NYT, WaPo, LAT, Guardian, Independent, Telegraph, Le Monde, Der Spiegel, The Economist, Nature, National Geographic, Scientific American, London Review of Books ... ?&lt;p&gt;EDIT: I guess this is what Blendle is, as mentioned in a sibling comment, except Blendle seems to be pay-per-view and I&amp;#x27;m suggesting monthly subscription.  Presumably Blendle could also offer monthly subscription.</text></comment>
<story><title>Letting users skip our paywall if they wrote an apology</title><url>https://www.kapwing.com/blog/skipping-our-paywall-with-an-apology</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Aloha</author><text>Online micropayments is still a woefully untouched market, it was supposed to be the wave of the future some years ago, but never went anywhere.&lt;p&gt;I won&amp;#x27;t pay 10 dollars a month (each) to the NYT (LAT, WaPo, et al) for a subscription I might quite happily pay 5 to 20 cents for an article though. I can see a service that functions a lot like EZPass, you load your account with 5-10 bucks, you agree to pay by clicking a payment button on a landing page on a website, the rest is mostly automatic, require more than just a click thru for anything larger than say, 25 cents. You could even set it up so it doesn&amp;#x27;t prompt you to pay until you&amp;#x27;re more than half way thru too.&lt;p&gt;Yes, It&amp;#x27;d take some doing to build infrastructure and get content providers online, but it would eliminate a lot of the mechanics of paying for news, information, online media and other like content (as well as many of the privacy and practical concerns of ad based content payment).&lt;p&gt;The big thing is to make it content agnostic, it can&amp;#x27;t be part of apple, google, facebook, whatever, it needs to be something that functions just as a payment&amp;#x2F;escrow service, not part of some other media empire - part of the utility of such a service is universality. I&amp;#x27;d also steer clear of person to person payments, large transactions, pretty much just be a one-trick-pony (at least until you have wide penetration), and only go after small payments - all of those other markets are well served by a multitude of providers, and would serve as a distraction from the primary product.</text></item><item><author>shash7</author><text>Don&amp;#x27;t think of it as asking for 1 dollar. Think like this:&lt;p&gt;Say if you walk up to me irl and ask for a dollar, I&amp;#x27;ll be like, sure here&amp;#x27;s your change and open up my wallet.&lt;p&gt;Online, asking for one dollar is too much mental overhead. Its not like people don&amp;#x27;t want to pay, but you need to make it easy for them to pay you.&lt;p&gt;Personally, I would stick with ad revenue instead of 1 dollar payments.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>dalfonso</author><text>Saw &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blendle.com&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;blendle.com&amp;#x2F;&lt;/a&gt; posted on HN a while back.  Works exactly like that.</text></comment>