I think it's a nice idea that would lead to very little revenue for the creator. You're making it easier to get the content free than to pay for it - is that the intention?
However, content creation is not free, even the most well intentioned sites may need ads to keep the lights on. Alternative would be for authors to keep it behind paywall like substack or something
I too would like people to work to provide content for me for free, which is what you are asking.
The problem is that paid content is bad. It's almost universally a signal of low quality.
My Twitter timeline, HN comments, IRC channels, obscure invite-only forums, or nerd/rationalists blogs have demonstrably better information on everything from the pandemic and nutrition to investment and programming than any well-compensated journalists I've ever read. Not to mention humour. They manage to be more accurate, informative, and funnier at the same time.
It should be difficult, nigh impossible, but isn't because paid media is terrible. Pandering to their audience, just the fact that everyone have a book in them but not necessarily four, groupthink in the MSM, adverse selection... I don't know the reason but I'm hardly the only one to see it.
I'd love it if you enjoyed programming so much that you'd code a database for me, please. I mean, i see little to no upside of the professionalization of computer engineering. Some things are just better done by amateurs, who do it for pure love of programming and for free.
Funny since I have half a dozen Windows licenses and use a free Linux distro to respond to you. It was largely written by professionals, sure, but there's still something to your take as well, even if it's a little GPT-like.
From a conceptual level, it makes sense to monetize a platform based only on the people making money. Like how game engines are generally free to use for games that make little or not money.
On the more practical side, it's kinda hard to make yours work. You probably don't want to charge a popular free app like Wikipedia the same as an app like Netflix.
What if you just charge people? TBH I don't want to pay because I don't need the content. It's good but optional. Turn it into paid and I simply go away. People may view your content just because it's free.
There is something to be said about a site that gets 100% of it's content from it's users without payment, 99% of it's moderation from it's users without payment. Turning around and trying to charge those same users for a different view of that data.
This has been tried several times. Google Contributor and Blendle are some examples. We had our own. Doesn't work because it's the paying-for-content part that people have a problem with. There's just not enough who are willing to pay the real costs of content. Many even get upset thinking that their internet connection is already "the internet".
Just to add, this is the creator's side. You can imagine a consumer side where everyone decides to put in X dollars like public radio, but watch their donation get equally distributed based on the content they consume. For both sides, the idea is to remove the profit motive from the platform itself, make it as automated and hands free as possible, make it fair, make it as open and data driven as possible, and to let creators focus on creating and nothing else.
And maybe just anyone who wants to join is good enough. By joining, creators will get paid automatically just by publishing content that generates income for themselves or anyone else.
That would at the very least, mean that users would pay a fee to use their product. As of now, as a free product that is the only way to monetize. The internet loves it's free, open products but at the same time, ironically, loves to build products whose founders are billionaires and even raises them to near hero status. It culminates in the users having a pretty terrible experience in the way of manipulation and privacy.
I'd turn the question around: if people don't see value enough in your content to pay for it, however small amount, then why are you creating it?
Sure, everybody likes free stuff, and not everyone has the disposable income to pay for your content, but at that point we are talking about a fair business model, not if you should ask people to pay for your content.
I'm in a similar situation, creating educational content for kids. I would love to be able to just make it freely available to everyone, but after spending a month digging through possible grants, I've come up empty.
This is how our society is structured, unless something fundamental changes (like UBI) we will have to ask for money. It's still way more honest than placing surveilance ads on your site.
>For instance, a site like Oxford Reference can charge between 25 to 99 cents for access to a single page of content
I want something entirely different. I want to pay what google makes on me watching ads (or 2x that, I don't care), and distribute that to people creating content I watch without me interfering on that process. Essentially, what happens when I listen to music on Spotify.
Their content is exceptional, no doubt about it. Indeed, I would be more apt to pay for the content than I would be to sign up for an account even though free. If it's free, make it free.
The cost per user to maintain these kinds of platforms is extremely low. That's why advertising supported models work. So that means if you charged for a platform, you wouldn't need to charge each user very much on a monthly or yearly basis. Such a platform could still be one that require no technical skills or knowledge from the users, who just want to publish their stuff.
Many people (especially tech people) have an almost psychotic adversity against any kind of paid online services. But do we always have to cater to those people, who'd refuse to pay $10 per year for an ad-free social network? I even suspect that a paid social network would be of higher quality, since the payment is an effective barrier against bots and some low-quality users.
I think that it would be ok option but for various reason I think it's only acceptable again if you can opt-out by direct payment.
I think that currently this is issue where both sides are partially quilty. Content creators are creating "dirty tricks" to get profit from their work. On the other hand users expect to everything to be free. Users have this huge gap in their head between "free" and "so-cheap-that's-almost-free".
Just as side note: if we wouldn't need this all high-tech for converting "free users" to $. Maybe some of great minds could think how to solve real problems... instead of "How to sell next fucking Nissan".
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