I don't understand why so few websites offer alternative methods of payment, subscriptions or donations and rely solely on ads.
I was positively surprised to see the New York Times and other newspapers have started offering relatively cheap online subscriptions (still too expensive [1]). I'm waiting for Youtube Red to become available in my country and have Netflix and Spotify. Patreon provides to be a great platform for niche content and I support several creators that cater to my interests.
Subscription and pay-what-you-want seems like much more sustainable business model than ads, or at least has good synergy.
[1] For ads a CPM (cost per mille) of $1.00 is common, meaning one ad view from me is worth $0.001. If I pay a site $1.00/month I'm paying them much more than I'm "paying" them with ads.
This is true, but I think it tends to favor established players. Look at YouTubers. I follow a few Youtubers and have for years. They all seem to be moving over to Twitch and the Paetreon model for support, specifically the Amazon Prime method. This is in part due to the lessening of Youtube's $$/view. I think this is great for them, and I pay them to continue doing what I love for them to do. However, I find that there are less and less people entering the 'market' over time. Is this a bad/good thing? I have no idea, just an observation.
I think the fact that people's Patreon income is visible might make it self-balancing.
If you like popular creator, but see that they're already getting quite a bit of money on Patreon, you're less likely to support them than another creator that you only kind of like, but who is currently getting less than you think they deserve. Unless the popular creator can convince you that they can spend the extra money to make their content better, and thus be worth it.
So I think with Patreon, creators' revenues will tend to converge on what people think they're actually worth.
The problem is that you would need a subscription for six or seven different sites, just to follow the links that are posted on HN. And I am not really interested in giving my money to NYT.
I was positively surprised to see the New York Times and other newspapers have started offering relatively cheap online subscriptions (still too expensive [1]). I'm waiting for Youtube Red to become available in my country and have Netflix and Spotify. Patreon provides to be a great platform for niche content and I support several creators that cater to my interests.
Subscription and pay-what-you-want seems like much more sustainable business model than ads, or at least has good synergy.
[1] For ads a CPM (cost per mille) of $1.00 is common, meaning one ad view from me is worth $0.001. If I pay a site $1.00/month I'm paying them much more than I'm "paying" them with ads.