I wrote a long a comment theorising why $100/year is a great starting point and then discovered you can toggle between "yearly" and "monthly". So they do offer $10/month -- it's just hidden behind a toggle.

You mean I can also choose $120/year?

No comment on whether either is reasonable but responding to “it costs too much” with a more expensive option is an interesting choice.

Only viewing total cost misses the point. For some people, it may be more reasonable for them to want to pay a fraction of the cost monthly vs. one big sum every 12 months. $10/month is more expensive, in total, over a year. However, $100 is more expensive in the short-term.

Also, paying monthly is only more expensive if the person paying decides to stay that long. Monthly payments allow flexibility to cancel rather than committing to a year.

Let's imagine you need to read a certain story, but don't care to become a long-term subscriber. The $10 for a month option fits that use.

It doesn't fit, direct payment for an article fits that use, not an expensive subscription you'd have to remember to cancel

If $10 is too expensive, then that article was not important anyway.

This also makes no sense, $10 is not some magic importance threshold

For it to make sense to you, imagine somebody buying a pizza:

- How much is the pizza?

- It's 10 dollars.

- I don't think it's worth 10 dollars!

- Uhm, okay then don't buy it.

- But I really need that pizza, it's really important that I get it!

- Then pay 10 dollars?

- That's too expensive, it's worth nowhere near that!

- If it's not worth 10 dollars why is it important to you?

- It's extremely important that I get that pizza and I really want it, but also you have to understand that it's not worth 10 dollars, so give it to me for free now!

...ad infinitum.

If it still doesn't make sense, then it will never make sense.

It will never make sense because it's nonsense: you can eat dozens of pizzas for $10, so it makes no sense to say that if you don't want to pay $10 for just a single pizza means you don't value pizza (and no one was talking about "give it to me for free now")

I think that if you can eat dozens of pizzas for $10, then you could probably write dozens of articles for the same price. So then buying an article from some magazine shouldn't be of any interest.

That said, it's going to actual workers who actually do the journalism.

Supporting 404 feels better than sending money to some corp where it gets pocketed by the c suite.

Cheaper than being owned by a billionaire, it just is a visible cost not external cost.

Means they need to average 4200 subscribers to pay themselves and run the place.

Assuming hosting costs, credit card fees, etc. - $420,000 a year for 4 people doesn't sound like enough.

Less than $10/month

Still more per month than a netflix account.

Ah yes, Netflix, the noted journalism company

Netflix the contender for our limited attention and only one of an ever growing number of subscriptions whose cost needs to be justified. I'm guessing a streaming service, even one with netflix's catalogue, is going to provide a lot more bang for your buck in terms of minutes of quality content per dollar.

Netflix has nothing to do with newspapers or other digital content and services that aren't video streaming.

People seem to make the comparison only because the things are accessed by using a screen, which seems to be a very simple perspective. Just because Netflix is a great bargain (for those who like their content), doesn't mean you can conclude that everything else is expensive.

Value for money and value for time will apply regardless.

Both entertainment and reading in-depth paid news are one and the same: luxuries one does in their (typically) scarce spare time using an (often) modest budget.

That's not my attitude to paid news at all. Quality news are often essential in order to understand things that are happening in your vicinity, that will have a direct impact on your life and on the life of people close to you. It is not necessarily about entertainment or wasting some time. Mostly low quality news media will have a focus on entertaining.

If we use Netflix as a benchmark, you shouldn't spend money on anything except for on Netflix, since almost nothing gives the same amount of hours of use per cent paid. Exceptions for lightbulbs, which are not that entertaining to watch.

I think most people sometimes go out for a drink, a meal, or a coffee - without agonizing much about the price, even though you could get many days glued to Netflix for the same price as that drink with friends.

*Ad-supported Netflix account.

Ad-free Netflix is more expensive.

$100 sounds much worse than phrasing it as 27 cents a day.

(cue cheesy music): "For just a quarter a day, you can save a struggling journalist from corporate overlords, submarine PR pieces, and human interest stories"

27 cents a day sounds worse to me. You typically can't pay for 1 day, so it's not really true.

If anybody has the magic formula for pricing, I'd be all ears. Yeah, $100 a year seems steep - but OTOH are twice as many people going to subscribe for $50? Five times as many for $20? (Or more...)

I don't know what the answer / formula is, but I pay more than that per year for my LWN.net subscription and for a few other publications. Less than that for others, but I really don't know what the "right" level would be to maximize revenue so they're able to pay themselves a decent salary and keep the lights on.