{"id":58765,"date":"2026-09-24T18:13:54","date_gmt":"2026-09-24T16:13:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/?p=58765"},"modified":"2026-09-24T18:13:56","modified_gmt":"2026-09-24T16:13:56","slug":"reviving-an-old-content-payment-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/reviving-an-old-content-payment-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviving an Old Content Payment Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Imagine, for a second that we reverted to the old habit of paying for a day’s content daily, a week’s content, once per week, or a month’s content, monthly. With Substack and many online newspapers they have the habit of saying “pay for the entire year” before we’ve had time to read a single article. At most we read half a paragraph before we see a popup saying “Please allow notifications, and half a scroll later “This content is for paying customers, please subscribe, or go away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is tremendously frustrating because we want to browse the web, and we want to read articles. That’s why we followed the hyperlink. The problem is that we’re faced with an “all or nothing” paywall, where we can either bounce to another site, or pay for a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue with paying for a year, for someone like me, is that I bounce between Swiss news, English news, French news and US news. If I paid for one or two newspapers from each region I’d be paying hundreds of francs per year, despite reading three or four articles, if we’re optimistic, and none if we’re realistic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s not that I don’t want to pay, but rather that we don’t have the right granularity. In the past we could pay per day, per week, per month, per season, or per year, and in so doing we payed not for a single article, but for an entire day, week, month or year of content.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Some newspapers and magazines offer the monthly payment option, and offer a PDF, but I don’t want a PDF. I want an easy to browse website, and individual pages for articles, like we have with blogs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If I pay for that day, then show me the news for that day, and if I pay for a weekly webzine, allow me to see the articles from that week. In so doing I believe that people would pay more often for news than we do at the moment, because it’s granular. It’s context specific.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One day we read Le Temps, the next we read The Guardian, and on the weekend we read The Economist, and then another day we read The New York Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The cost of printing a newspaper or magazine is expensive, and if it goes unsold then it becomes obsolete. At the moment Le Matin, on Sunday, is a newspaper that costs 5 CHF on a Sunday, in physical form.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Back in the day we had the habit of paying 20p for the Guardian as students, and I think three or four GBP for magazines, but that was years ago. Newspapers were easily 3 francs per day, every day and we didn’t mind, because it was in our habits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue is that today we’re expected to subscribe to each news source, substack newsletter and even blogs. In the process we are more and more limited in what we can read because paying for a year to read articles every so often is expensive, and it makes sense to allow us to pay per day, per week, or per month, and eventually commit to a year at a time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Newspapers and online magazines are missing out on the long tail of consumers. People who want to pick and mix their news sources like I do. People like me browse the news via Google News and when we see interesting headlines we click through.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The issue is that after we’ve bitten the lure, they try to reel us in and make us subscribe for a year, when we want to dip in and out and read from several sources, depending on headlines, and the day.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

By not offering the day option, or the week option, but offering the monthly or yearly deals, they’re forcing us either to dive in fully clothed, or walk out without buying or paying for anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

They are missing on the opportunity presented by the impulse reader. The reader that finds the headlines engaging enough to click, but not engaging enough to pay for a month, or a year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And Finally, YouTube Premium, Audible Platinum and Premium, Apple Music, Apple Fitness+ and Google One all cost more, and people hesitate less about spending their money. I agree that Audible books are cheaper if you subscribe rather than pay for books, one at a time, but for everything else, it’s expensive, with little reward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Paying for quality journalism, and hard news is justified because it allows us to make informed decisions. Months ago I noticed that a Sea shipping publication costs 6000 CHF per year, so 6 Euros to 140 Euros per year is nothing, in comparison. It is something, when you add it to all the other subscriptions you’d be forced to have if you had Le Monde, The Guardian, Le Temps and two or three more publications. Three to four newspapers and you’re spending a thousand or more francs per year on being informed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s a shame we can’t dip in and out, more easily.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>Imagine, for a second that we reverted to the old habit of paying for a day’s content daily, a week’s content, once per week, or a month’s content, monthly. With Substack and many online newspapers they have the habit of saying “pay for the entire year” before we’ve had time to read a single article. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":10545,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"federated","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[255],"tags":[1117,6141,9009,6959,2144,9007,5055,9008,6627],"class_list":["post-58765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-swiss-walks","tag-content","tag-daily","tag-magazines","tag-monthly","tag-newspapers","tag-payment","tag-seasonal","tag-weekly","tag-yearly"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=58765"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58765\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58766,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58765\/revisions\/58766"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=58765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=58765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.main-vision.com\/richard\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=58765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}