[MattieTK]

From working in media, another problem with micropayments is deciding on that dollar cost.

Without coming up with some administration of value to each article (which I'm not saying isn't worthwhile, it's just not something that's typically done) -- and perhaps even then -- it's very challenging to come up with a value that readers might understand.

If everything is $1, but long investigations or in-depth reporting costs more than that, how do you stop losing potential subscribers (who would contribute more ARR) to these payments. And equally on the (admittedly large) percentage of stories that might not have such value, how do you price them?

This is why subscriptions tend to work. Slowly you can weed out material that isn't working for either acquisition or retention. But you are always going to have articles that are good retainers but poor acquirers. To a micropayment reader the value of that article is low, but to subscriptions it may be higher. You might never do that article if you marked everything by its CAC value, but if you didn't you may lose $5000 ARR.

How on earth do you price it fairly?

It's complicated.

I'd be in more favour of more expensive 24hr passes that show the value of the subscription to regular readers. Say $3 for 24hrs, and $30 for a month. I think in terms of small payments that's as close are you're going to get.