A lot of people are happy to pay $10/month for https://www.stratechery.com. Interested to see who else out there has loyal readerships willing to pay them!
I'd happily pay for these:<p>List of real life ideas/pain points that can be solved and sold with software, with some decent research into it (not like "my uncle says he will pay $3.50 to automate his antique shop")<p>Same as the previous one, but in the non-profit space and not for making money. Specific problems that I can write code for, without having to worry about whether it is actually useful or not<p>Stories/commentary/interviews about companies working on solving very hard problems with tech, regardless of whether they succeed or not (not photo sharing apps, but problems like genetics, pharma, privacy etc)<p>Actionable insights/ideas on improving my abilities - creativity, problem solving, health etc (no pseudo science, no "motivational" stuff)
I don't think I would pay a monthly membership for a website, but what I would be willing to pay for is Google and Facebook to stop watching me and showing advertisements.<p>If I could pay the online ad companies to pay the content creator like I was a "click" or a "view" I could have an ad-free online experience while the content creator continues to get paid like I had seen the ad.<p>The opportunity for Google is huge I know a lot of people who would cough up $5-10/mo for an ad-free online experience.
None of them. Don't get me wrong, there are a lot of blogs and media sources I like, but at the end of the day I can get any information I want somewhere else for free.<p>Heck, in many cases, the information I need is either paid for by taxes (the BBC) or provided by hobbyists for free anyway.
I was recently introduced to the 3blue1brown youtube channel. Easily worth $5/mo, IMO.<p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw" rel="nofollow">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYO_jab_esuFRV4b17AJtAw</a>
I just began paying $5/mo to be a "member" at Medium. It's meant to enhance the discovery feature and the ability to access curated archives. Really it was a spur of the moment decision after I found myself reading and greatly appreciating an article from 2015[1], but I haven't really used the membership or understood it well enough to say that I'll continue yet. I think there's great need for a specific type of personal journalism Medium is known for, and I do want to support it especially if it means better research and discovery. Also given how much I've read off of Medium (good and not so good), a payment of some sort felt due. Let's see.<p>[1] <a href="https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d600c04" rel="nofollow">https://medium.com/matter/living-and-dying-on-airbnb-6bff8d6...</a>
> Interested to see who else out there has loyal readerships willing to pay them!<p>So, shouldn't the more apt question be - Which blogs/newsletter you <i>are</i> paying $x/month for?
I would gladly pay $10/month to read Slate Star Codex. Heck, I'd pay $10/month just to have access to its archived posts.<p>I'd pay $5 for ranprieur.com. Not a ton of content, but he keeps me thinking about interesting questions.<p>I don't follow Gwern actively but I'd probably pay to have access to his site too.
I read more blogs (single articles based on headlines of interest) than newsletters (digests that show up in my inbox). While I find many of them interesting and informative (krebs, schneier, ars, hn...) there's so much duplicated info around there isn't much I'd be willing to actually pay $60/year for.<p>Would rather do something like cryptocurrency micro-payments per actual article read to the end (or upvoted, clapped, etc) as opposed to spending a set amount of money per month for potentially unhelpful content or articles I don't get around to reading.<p>That would reward content creators for writing good material that actually gets read and the economy of scale would pay based on that mutual incentive. Such micropayments would also be a better metric than simple impressions and clicks.
5/month is too much. Consider how many different websites you're reading in one month, then imagine they all cost $5/month. It will start to hurt.<p>On the other hand, sites that charge you directly have to charge a minimum because of banking fees etc.<p>What we need is some middleman that will charge you $15/month then distribute it somehow along all the sites that you wish to support. Criteria to be done, maybe evenly, maybe based on how much you read from each...
There aren't many. HN is the closest, but the truth is that I'd not start out paying $5 a month for it: I'd have to have 3 months free to test, then .... maybe. I'd probably pay for Reuters, AP, or BBC. The thing with these is varied content or content I check on my own.<p>The problem with most things bogs is that I don't get that much out of them. They are like newspapers or magazines: Might be OK every now and then, but nothing I'd read daily without getting bored of the content or finding it not nearly as useful as paying attention to them occasionally. I really wish advertisements were responsible and non-intrusive, but unfortunately this is rarely so. It wasn't so with television, newspapers, and magazines pre-internet either. Paid cable was filled with so many ads! Even paid channels advertising their own advertising long after a decent cable guide on demand existed.<p>My other big exception might be a cooking blog if it lacks the horrible ad experience and stops people from forcing their morals on me (I can buy organic flimsy brand butter if I choose, but listing it as an ingredient annoys me to no end). But again, I'd not pay it upfront and a free full-access trial would be necessary.
I stumbled upon <a href="https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/" rel="nofollow">https://www.dailycodingproblem.com/</a> recently and it's the first time I want to pay for a newsletter. I don't need to pass a coding interview, but I used to be a competition programmer in high school and love thinking of tricky coding problems to solve. The newsletter includes a detailed solution to each problem (the next day.) What a great idea.<p>I also used to pay for <a href="http://railscasts.com/" rel="nofollow">http://railscasts.com/</a> by Ryan Bates - back when it was a paid subscription. I paid for how succinct the information was organized, despite there being a tonne of other Ruby blogs out there.
Almost none, unless it was something I'd read every day + found more than 1/2 articles relevant + useful. Won't even pay for NYT if only 5 or 6 articles/month add significant value.<p>We need a subscription business model that aggregates content like cable/pay tv, so I can pay a fair price once, and continue grazing across most sites without worrying about individual subscriptions or micropayments. WSJ and Economist are only sources I would pay for (at a reasonable price) that aren't providing specific data points I can use. And, most people wouldn't find those as useful as I do, so it's down to personal preferences and how much of any source you'll get value from.<p>It's why individual subscriptions to everything is a dead-in-the-water business model that's going to kill off most journals. Most sites will be abandoned if there is a paywall.<p>Think about it this way -- how many people would pay for The History Channel or HGTV as individual add-on tv channels? Yet a very large number of people will occasionally watch those sources if it's included in general subscription, and they add value to the overall package, even if you rarely watch them. That's the way I view 99% of online content.<p>And, you have to make it dead easy, and not be constantly harrassing me about subscriptions or micropayments, or I'm gone. And, I also expect sites I'm paying for to be ad-free and not slowing down my browser, or I won't pay.
Hi,<p>I was curious to see the responses to this question.
I run Opportunity Overload and we have paying subscribers for our pro-tier. We started at $10 per month and now have a $50 per month plan (still working on the details of this).<p>We send out the best weekly entrepreneurial opportunities in the form of sites, side projects, domains, broad opportunities and courses that we write.<p><a href="http://www.opportunityoverload.com" rel="nofollow">http://www.opportunityoverload.com</a><p>Focus on providing something that you would want to pay for. 'Scratch your own itch' sort of speak.<p>Hope this helps,
Vic
I was paying $5/mo for Ars Technica, and recently switched to paying $50/year, because they were giving away a Yubikey with it. You don’t get any more content, but no ads and full text RSS.
I tell you what would be amazing: content aggregators (like HN) that charged and distributed money to the content providers.<p>Unfortunately it's really hard to build a community if you charge.
I discovered it primarily as a YouTube channel but the guy who makes <a href="http://iliketomakestuff.com" rel="nofollow">http://iliketomakestuff.com</a> has some great projects out there, including a number of arduino based projects. I’m trying to expand my horizon beyond web development and it appeals to my inner maker.
LWN.net<p>It's not a blog or a newsletter but proper journalism and definitely worth the $5/mo I pay for it. I don't think there is any newsletter that just recycles other people's content would be worth the money.
LWN.net. I don't read their articles often, but seeing what's on the forefront of the Linux project and associated work without combing through tons of commits is useful
I'm subscribed to the correspondent but it's more their mission and work I'm supporting than actually paying to read their articles, though they are very good.
<a href="https://blog.acolyer.org/" rel="nofollow">https://blog.acolyer.org/</a> - for summary/overview of CS papers.
Seriously don't know. Anything I can think of seems like a stretch. I pay a monthly fee for access to a popular Polish newspaper/news portal though.
Currently I don't pay for any blogs or newsletters. I'd be willing to pay for high quality content as long as it were still made freely available, ideally with a permissive license. It is my belief that knowledge should generally be accessible to society.<p>I support content creators that have used similar strategies in other mediums. Some examples:<p>1. Exploring ES6 [0]. The book is freely available online which means I can access it anywhere and easily share relevant sections if the need arises, such as when having an online discussion or explaining to a beginner how a specific feature works. I happily bought a copy and regularly recommend it to others.<p>2. Textual [1]. It's an open source IRC client which charges for the precompiled version. I like having the option to dig into the source and compile it myself if the need arose. Paying for it allows the developer to continue working on bug fixes and improving the tool.<p>If I were more involved in the topics they covered, I'd happily start paying for LWN.net [2]. They allow linking to articles without paywalls and seem to produce very high quality content.<p>[0] <a href="http://exploringjs.com/es6/" rel="nofollow">http://exploringjs.com/es6/</a><p>[1] <a href="https://www.codeux.com/textual/" rel="nofollow">https://www.codeux.com/textual/</a><p>[2] <a href="https://lwn.net/" rel="nofollow">https://lwn.net/</a>
very good entertainment that hits my niche and isn't widely available for free.<p>Investigative journalism ("sponsoring" good work being done)<p>Content that helps me make more money that I can't get for free elsewhere online.<p>Content that helps me save costs that I can't get for free elsewhere online.
I'm willing to pay $5/month for one blog: my own. That is what a basic VPS with plenty of bandwidth costs.<p>edit: Interesting, this is fast approaching my most downvoted comment ever. Wonder why that is. I didn't even bother to link my own blog in case that came off as overly self-promotional.<p>If you think that content should be free, what is wrong with putting your money where your mouth is and giving your own away?