We refuse to pay for content, and we refuse to view ads. I keep hearing "Then come up with a different business model, just look at X" where X is simply burning VC, and then we all complain when X goes away or X starts to show ads or charge. Models like Patreon don't scale. If you can figure out a way to monetize without ads or paywalls, I'd love to hear it.
What if I don't want to make money from my content? I just want to share it with the world, let them read it (or not read it) however they want, share it, copy it, comment on it, link to it.
That was the dream of the early internet, and with the centralised nature of Facebook, Google Groups it has faded.
It's easy enough for me as somebody technical. But what about my non-technical friends? They move to Medium, Facebook, Blogger, etc, as a way of hosting their content because it's easier.
WordPress is probably the remaining champion of the easy-to-use open web, and all we do is bitch about how slow and insecure it is.
> What if I don't want to make money from my content?
That is perfectly fine and there is nothing that stands in your way of doing that - more power to you! There is a contingent who do not want to pay for, or view ads on content from publishers who would like to make money from their content (because it is their day-job)
Well, when are the publishers' demands reasonable? A lot of online media is less about adding value, and more about doing whatever it takes to get your attention.
Not to mention opinion writers or critics: They already have the privilege of pushing their opinions on a large audience. Why should we pay them? For their eloquence? Sure it's a lot of work, being persuasive in writing, but is it the audience who should pay for being persuaded?
I think that the collective action problem of paying for the stuff we want can be solved, will be solved - even is solved, in increasingly many ways. But there's a lot of things we're used to that we don't really want, in proportion to what we used to pay for it.
I agree, but I was referring to Medium's business model (because of the OP's comment) - get people to write your content for free, and then make money off it. It's frustrating that they block distribution of your content to increase their own revenues. It's a completely different use case to BBC, the Guardian, NYT, etc, who pay people good salaries to write their stories.
That's the thing, right? Most of us have plenty of bandwidth and storage space and everything we need to host a site sitting in our living room. It's still too complicated for most people, though. It should already be as easy as Facebook...
Why do you think Patreon-esque models don't scale? I don't have info one way or the other but I'm curious why you're so strongly of the opinion that they don't.
Sure, it's a good pay check for one, acceptable for two if you're in the top 10 or 20 patreons, but nobody is coming back to your site if you have 1 or 2 contributors. Now, put together a team to compete with current media, and it simply doesn't add up. This could change, but I was expecting bigger numbers by now.
edit: I just want to clarify, we didn't go with a Patreon model. My expectation was that the amount donated for Patreons would be bigger by now.
I'd argue that Patreon was never intended to support content/media companies. It was designed to allow individuals to create content and "sell" it directly to the people consuming it in a way that they'll actually pay for it. In a way, it was designed to allow people to avoid working for/supporting media companies.
it looks like the "quality" of patreons & what kind of "product" you produce matter.
The last has 2 entries with similar number of patreons (Aaron Mahnke, podcast, with 1726 and Jessica Nigri, cosplayer, with 1634) and vastly different income (8k vs 23k).
Well, if something can't make money in a honest way (and no one is willing to support it out of goodness of their heart) - maybe it doesn't deserve to exist?
I'd say Internet would be 100x better if those sites that complain about "business models" all went bust.
I reduced the op's statement to 'I don't care about content provided by professional writers' because each and every one of them/the institutions employing them is/has been trying to figure out a business model.
And the WSJ is as far as I know not one of those offering a full RSS feed for free, so that'd probably fall under "not honest" in their definition.
One thing I notice that needs to be pointed out: "professional writers" != "good writers". "Professional" is sometimes treated as a synonym for "good" / "serious", but IMO shouldn't because it isn't. Professional writers are those who write for a living. Today's market does not promote good writing. So yeah, I don't care about content provided by professsional writers, because more often than not, it's not content worth reading.
Newspapers actually do have a shot at figuring this out. Some let you read a few articles for free, and ask for a small payment for more, some experiment with publishing platforms for per-article content via micro-payments (e.g., https://blendle.com), others simply make a selection of articles and news available for free to act as an advertisement for their paid subscriptions.
Crikey's business model comprises a daily email and a monthly bill. They've managed to grow steadily for over a decade, and they complain more about defamation lawsuits than about add blockers. The important news would get covered if every city the size of Melbourne had one of those.
The real problem might be that it's advertisers who need lots of reporters; the public doesn't, because there is only so much news that's worth paying to read. The only answer would be to avoid trying too hard to scale.
