It is a downside that comes up yearly or two, however nobody has applied a helpful answer but.
Promoting is a surprisingly unhealthy means for a tradition to pay for content material, as a result of the sort of content material that will get rewarded is commonly dumbed down for a big viewers or is optimized for a small viewers of individuals keen to purchase one thing that makes a revenue.
It’s additionally inefficient, as advertisers can’t know upfront what’s going to work, and creators get a really small share of the advert spend.
An alternate is to pay for what you get, the best way we deal with carrots, baseballs and clarinets. As a substitute of shopping for a baseball, although, you’re shopping for an opportunity to look at a video.
Micropayments are a system the place you pay a penny or a nickel or a greenback for a bit of content material.
It introduces two sorts of friction, although:
- There must be a tech system that may successfully transfer tiny quantities of cash round.
- As a reader/client of content material, it is advisable to always make selections about what’s “price it.”
About thirty years in the past, I described a easy answer to each issues:
For $25 you should purchase a content material passport. It’s obtainable for buy on any web site that’s a part of the content material community, and also you want one to learn the content material on their web site. The location that sells it to you will get $10 in fee for promoting it to you.
It retains observe of each member web site you go to (that’s very easy now, with a cookie). After which the coordinator of the system allocates, on a share foundation, $10 to the websites you go to. It’s all gonna go someplace, whether or not you go to one web site or a thousand. There’s no friction, as a result of it’s a buffet, identical to it’s now. Learn all you need, no advertisements, no hassles.
The websites that get visited essentially the most get essentially the most combination cash from the month-to-month distributions of royalties.
Every web site has an incentive to promote a number of passports (the fee is critical) and the coordinator of the community is making 25% as properly.
It’s actually clear who the client is (the reader) and it’s simple for any web site to affix the community. Aligned incentives, a easy and resilient answer.
Have enjoyable. (PS that is unrelated to yesterday’s submit about federations, only a coincidence.)
