Yup, lots of sites do that - e.g. theguardian.com. The trouble is that paying for a yearly subscription is a whole other prospect than paying a cent as a one-off or even on a per-article basis. Micropayments offer a much nicer business model, IMO - I am almost never going to pay for a subscription to a website, but I am totally willing to make one-off donations, and have done so.

I would gladly give nytimes.com $0.10 to $1.00 to read individual articles and probably do it scores of times in a given month.

But I'll be damned if I'm going to pay $455 per year to read all them on any of my devices: http://www.nytimes.com/subscriptions/Multiproduct/lp5558.htm...

Hey Colin,

Cameron Schorg here with SnipBit. We are currently creating a platform exactly like what you are describing. Users would have a browser extension that allows them to pay for articles with one click and browse the web a la carte style -essentially solving the subscription problem and the annoyance of the paywalls themselves. You should definitely check us out at www.snipbit.io . In addition, i would love to have a longer chat with you to better understand our user base. If you would be willing, please reach out to me at [email protected]!

I see nothing in my fairly basic up-armored browser. Who's the spammer/"mitigator"?

It's a fairly unobtrusive notice at the bottom of the screen. Screenshot: https://www.evernote.com/l/ABCw8ehFbgxMN6GYJ-RlacMysNSk3Iew0...