[3bodyProblem]

I think a 10 euro subscription service is a lazy business model, only one worse is everything based on ad revenue. I loved the fact that you could buy articles instead of getting another subscription.

I tried to buy an article last year, I'm not 100% sure why, but I never succeed in reading the article that I wanted to read. I just wanted to pay like 10 euro's until i needed to pay the next 10. But they were already forcing you into a monthly subscription model.

Now they are just the dutch version of apple news, seems like a terrible spot to be in.

I didn't try the audio stuff yet, that might be interesting. I enjoyed the audio stuff from Audm, but I thought it was expensive to get a subscription. Also to much competition in the podcast space.

I think https://thecorrespondent.com/ is doing a better job at changing the world. It's clearer what you get for your money, and you actually feel like your supporting journalism. Not sure if I feel the same way about Blendle.

That said, i know some people who use it, but mostly because their jobs requires them to be up to date with most newspapers.

[microtonal]

I loved the fact that you could buy articles instead of getting another subscription.

I disliked the pay per article model, because it reinforces how expensive news articles actually are in the real world (outside ads-sponsored, click bait articles). I also tried their subscription model, but disliked it even more because you could only read the articles that they (or some ML algorithm) selected. It seems that they now offer unlimited magazine articles (but no newspapers), but magazines do not really interest me.

In the end we decided to take a newspaper subscription again. The price is somewhat steep, but you have unlimited access, and most of the money ends up where it should go.

[gpvos]

If I understand correctly, they also offer free newspapers, except for the most recent 7 days. So it's not for you if your job requires you to be up-to-date with most newspapers.

[dmix]

Maybe they should’ve done a token system so you can sub to some and/or use a fixed amount of tokens for individual articles. Plus you can stock up on tokens or buy them in bulk when you run out.

Then they could do a reward system for referrals and other interactions to get free tokens.

[arnvald]

The problem with pay-per-article model is that every article you want to read is a separate purchase decision ("do I want to pay for this thing or not?". In order to make 10EUR from one user, they need to decide to buy 40 separate articles and that means deciding 40 times whether to pay for content. Maybe a subscription model based on credits would be better? For 10EUR/m you get 40 credits that you spend on articles, for 20EUR/m you get 100 credits etc. Similar to Audible, maybe that would work?

[Wehrdo]

I used Blendle regularly for a while, and noticed that their painless refund option really mitigated this "decision stress" for me. There were a few articles that just turned out to be garbage click-bait, so at the end of the article I could simply click "refund me", and immediately get refunded for that article. It didn't happen that frequently, but knowing it was an option made the decision to buy seem less final.

[gpvos]

Well, in the previous model you had a balance that you could top up, similar to what you describe. Not all articles were the same price though (generally between 20 cents and 1 euro).