>Every site could set their own price, or specific tiers, which users can agree to, just like they do with subscription-based content today.

you're describing the model of a product called blendle, a service which i loved but which totally failed. they failed to attract users, and they failed to attract publishers. this isn't some new idea that nobody had tried. it's been done. and it failed, not just for blendle. people have tried micropayments, they've tried subscriptions, if you can imagine a PPV model, it's probably been tried. readers and publishers both hate it.

I wasn't aware of Blendle, but I'm not surprised that it failed.

Advertising is ubiquitous on the web. Integrating it into web sites is simple, it works well for generating revenue at scale, and users have been conditioned from every other media industry to accessing content for "free". There is practically no friction for users, save for the degraded user experience, which most people have learned to live with or ignore.

So right off the bat, anyone trying to deploy alternative business models is going against the current of a trillion-dollar industry, and well established consumer expectations.

> readers and publishers both hate it.

Why do you think that is? Is it because the micropayment model is inherently bad, or because implementing it is difficult for website owners, it is annoying to use for users, and ultimately brings little revenue?

What if implementing it were as easy and convenient as advertising is today? What if users had an easy and convenient way to link their payment method into their browser, and from then on it required no maintenance? What if they understood that the web is not "free", but someone on the other end should be paid for their work if they find it valuable? What if this model actually generated significant revenue for publishers? What if all this was simply the way the web operated from the start?

Clearly this model hinges on a bunch of hypotheticals, but hopefully you get the point. There's nothing fundamentally wrong about users paying for consuming content. This is the way business transactions work in most respectable industries. You want something, you pay for it directly. You don't ask a third party to step in between you and the seller, to show you manipulative content that directly benefits them and their associates, while indirectly paying for the thing you actually want to buy. The fact we've accepted this corrupt business model as normal in many facets of life is absolutely insane. Never mind the fact that it's being used to manipulate us into thinking and acting in ways which corrupt democratic processes and cause sociopolitical instability, or that it's abusing our right to privacy and exploiting our data. To hell with all of that.

Do you think the fact that NO major content websites (NYT, substack, WSJ, ...) have settled on a PPV model is simply because they haven't thought of it? Or is it more likely that the numbers absolutely do not work?

That's a false dichotomy.

I can't speak for all web sites, but I reckon a combination of factors could explain why such a solution hasn't been deployed:

1. Advertising is ubiquitous, easy to integrate, and provides a safe revenue stream.

2. There is little to no infrastructure for the PPV model. Whoever builds it would need to maintain their own version of it.

3. People expect the web to be "free". This is even true within technical crowds who understand that it's really not free. And a large part of that group doesn't mind advertising.

So, really, it would require a substantial amount of effort to implement, it would add additional friction to users, and ultimately only a minority would appreciate it.

Had this model been in place from the beginning of the web, things might be different today. Alas, if my grandma had wheels...

And people prefer unlimited subscriptions.

No one uses the PPV model because there isn't sufficient payment infrastructure (402 payment required). The friction for entering your credit card information into a website is ridiculous, you might as well target the high end of the market with a monthly subscription.

The PPV model, like Ads, works well for websites that you're not well associated with. Random blogs and websites that you otherwise wouldn't be willing to share your credit card info with.

Have any of them actually tried it though? If they have and I missed it, then I apologize, but I can't recall the NYT letting me read an article for $1 with zero friction via Apple or Google Pay or Stripe link or something. It they tried it and the numbers didn't work, that's one thing, but I don't recall that happening.

Doing it via conventional card networks won't work, the fees would eat most/all of the payment.

A critical mass of publishers would need to team up and form a cooperative/etc where a user could register once, deposit some money, and then that money would be spent every time they view an article. But that requires cooperation between competitors, which is already hard enough, and the cancer that is the advertising industry wouldn't like this potential existential threat and would be more than happy to pour fuel onto the fire to ensure it never succeeds.

What's surprising is why the card networks themselves don't get in on it. They could do so in a completely backwards-compatible manner, introducing a new card number range that only works with transactions under a certain amount and have different fraud protection/chargeback rules.

WSJ was available on blendle (pay-per-view microtransactions). Washington Post was available on scroll (monthly subscription, divided up amongst the publishers you read each month). neither service still exists.

i don't believe NYT has ever tried a pay-per-view model.

I think it might be because with ad model you can sell profiling data many times over to different parties. You can’t do the same with a single charge.