When I go have a beer in a bar, I often give between 0.2 and 1$ tips. Why? Because it really easy and require no effort. I would with no hesitation give 0.1$ to a interesting article if it were only one click away. I would easily give 0.5-1$ after a good episode of a TV show if I only had to do one click. Yes, that include pirated TV shows.

The problem is that there is no way to easily give a small amount of money to a content creator on its creations.

Hey teps, Cameron Schorg with a new startup called SnipBit. We are working on making a platform very similar to what you talked about. The main difference is that we would charge for the content on the front end and then offer a refund option if you didn't like the content. You should check us out at www.snipbit.io and if you would be willing, I'd would love to have a chat as we are ALWAYS doing customer discovery ([email protected]).

Take a look at Blendle.

https://blendle.com/

>If you don't want to see ads, you pay a small amount using bitcoins. I don't see it working unless it's forced upon you.

Reminds me of that Black Mirror episode. Spoiler: things go very badly if it's forced upon you.

Very different concept. In Black Mirror, you're forced to watch media and ads every moment you're awake unless you pay not to. Here, if you choose to willingly visit a website to consume some sort of content but refuse to look at the ads that fund that content, you're asked to make a payment to fund said content.

This is, afterall, what the majority of adblock and anti-tracking proponents have been lobbying for. 'We don't want to have to deal with ads. We don't want to be tracked. We want to pay for content.' This simply gives them the opportunity. Note that it is also voluntary and doesn't prevent the content from being displayed. Heck, it says "would you consider" and has a suggested bitcoin donation equivalent to 1 penny.

Black Mirror simply falls down the slippery slope and tells the story of people living at the bottom of it. Voluntary transaction is truly voluntary only if neither side needs it to live a productive life.

This is exactly what I've been thinking about re:the recent slew of adblock news on HN. Content creation and distribution have real costs, and I see other, far more intrusive models developing to combat loss of ad revenue if ad blockers become the norm.

Not to mention the contribution to rising income inequality/decreasing social mobility. If all useful information is behind a paywall, only those that can afford it will have access - further increasing the return to capital.

All this to say, be careful what you wish for...

Yes, except the most useful content out there is available largely for free (or would cost a crazy small amount to keep funded, if the userbase contributed as little as $1 or $3).

In particular, I'm thinking of:

Wikipedia

Google

Also, maybe it will lead people to start putting trust in offline archives of information, which wouldn't be terrible either.

Honestly, a lot of the "content" on the internet is garbage/not productive. I can at the very least argue that lots of bandwidth that's being used on the internet is just watching shit that's usually not educational.

Google runs the largest ad network on the planet. It's absolutely critical to their business model. Wikipedia is great, but they produce no content of their own and lack any sort of curation. Of course there's a lot of crap on the Internet, but I personally find many types of well-curated, professional content extremely valuable. I personally would be willing to pay for much of it, but I'm in a better position to do so than many - which is exactly my point.

My point was that if Google decided to change it's business model, and charged something like a $1 for a monthly subscription to using it's search services, it would be more than safe.

I don't think the fact that wikipedia produces it's own content is relevant, and whether it lacks curation being relevant either. Regardless of those two facts, it is immensely useful. The majority of articles, especially on highly technical/useful topics (like farming techniques) are mostly accurate.

Just because some may not be in a position to buy/afford something doesn't mean that everyone should endure inefficiency. Also, depending on the price, the truly important information would still be worth it. I don't think what's going to keep the less fortunate from using web services is a reasonably priced web service.

Currently, you can get a VPS for roughly $10/month, and a domain name for something like $70 (a .com usually costs this much I think). If you had monthly subscribers who were asked to pay $1 a month, the amount of subscribers to keep you in business (nevermind that today's tech can easily scale up to thousands of users on one box), is not high at all.

Just because you create something doesn't mean you deserve to get paid for it. You have to create something people actually want to pay you for. And if they do that, then getting paid shouldn't be a problem, should it?

More importantly: just because I look at something doesn't mean I should have to pay for it. You can't know if an article is crap until after you read it. That's the nature of dealing in information -- you can't sell information without first giving people something valuable for free and building trust. If you violate your customer's trust, you can no longer sell information.

That's the state of internet advertising today.

I think 4ela was talking about a technical problem, not a philosophical objection.

This project is in 'proof of concept' stage right now. Will be solving the technical problem of cross-device/browser/adblocker testing next.

It all depends on the customer's relationship with the brand. The thesis here is that consumers will support brands they are loyal to and/or have an affection for. Even with it being forced upon them.