by everling on 1/15/21, 6:00 PM with 7 comments
by jfengel on 1/15/21, 6:37 PM
As you say, it would likely cost as much as the dead-tree edition, and how much usage would it get? What fraction of people would ever use it? I suspect a lot of people would say, "I could see giving you $.05 or $.25 for this, but I'm not going to pay $3.00 to read one article. And I don't want access to more than that; I just want this article."
I mean, it would probably be worth the experiment for some major newspaper or magazine. I bet somebody has tried. But the history of micropayments is already a long string of failed attempts. Money just makes everything hard, and there seems to be a minimum below which it's just not worth it.
by dugreader on 1/15/21, 7:22 PM
by tacostakohashi on 1/15/21, 8:58 PM
A magazine contains ads between the articles, and that's where most of the revenue comes from. If you just bought one article, where would the ads go?
Selling a subscription gives some stability and ability to forecast revenues, and hire the right number of writers, sign leases, pay pensions, etc. Selling articles individually would lead to wildly varying and unpredictable income, and lead to the worst imaginable kinds of clickbait.
by vimy on 1/16/21, 4:04 AM
by selfishgene on 1/15/21, 7:00 PM
https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome
For research journal articles, just search Google for sci-hub to find the latest domain name for Alexandra Elbakyan's paywall-bypassing site.