| Tips/micropayments are bad customer experiences. From Stratechery (multi-line quote): ----------- I am instinctually skeptical of micropayments for a whole host of reasons: - First, you have to have attach a payment method; it is hard to overcome that level of friction for just a few cents - Secondly, if said payment method is a credit card, you need to deal with the fact the fees on a credit card transaction start around $0.29 - Third, there is the psychological burden imposed on customers who need to continually choose whether or not to make a purchase To date the only sort of business that has succeeded with micropayments are free-to-play games: the App Store supplies the payment method (and eats the credit card fees), most games obfuscate the money spent (by selling in-game currency), and even then the strategy succeeds by hooking a small number of “whales” who play the game compulsively; most never pay. This, in my estimation, would never work for a newspaper or magazine: there is too much competition when it comes to content, the price of any one piece couldn’t be priced high enough to overcome fees, and getting people to pay is hard. Moreover, while a subscription model caps the amount of revenue you earn per customer, it also reduces the likelihood said customer will explore alternatives: it is set and forget, while a micropayment asks for consideration every single time. ----------- https://stratechery.com/2016/blendle-launches-in-the-u-s-an-... (paywalled) |