
Blendle: A radical experiment with micropayments in journalism, 365 days later - duckson
https://medium.com/on-blendle/blendle-a-radical-experiment-with-micropayments-in-journalism-365-days-later-f3b799022edc
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mvdwoord
Much like birger, I never paid for any of the 'paywalled' news outlets before.
Mostly due to the terrible user experience, t&c, and lack of content (often
single newspaper/magazine). Even though I find most content in newspapers not
even worth reading, let alone paying for. I do really want to pay for some
high quality articles and Blendle makes this possible.

They nailed it for me with the money back option, truly no questions asked.
The pre-paid wallet makes me comfortable in that I don't feel tricked/lured
into some subscription or other form of overpaying. Overall very smooth UX, no
annoying crap. Makes you wonder why so many websites still try to nag me into
paying when it only drives me away from them.

Would like to see some (a lot) more titles, especially international, but
understand they are working on this. Also, since alexandernl is reading..
please add wordcount to the webinterface and wordcount/price to emails, thanks
:)

Other than that, much enjoyed. Keep up the good work!

~~~
furyg3
Before Blendle I only used paywalled sites that I had a physical subscription
for. It was horrible (only the economist worked as expected). Watching
magazines and newspapers implement their own solutions was just painful...
some Dutch newspapers did an awful job with apps. Newsweek also had a
hilariously user experience as they kept switching their strategy.

Blendle provides both an excellent user experience and a good solution to
content providers who should really not be making their own apps.

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walterbell
Good to see this data point:

 _" We don’t sell a lot of news in Blendle. People apparently don’t want to
spend money on something they can get everywhere for free now. People do spend
money on background pieces. Great analysis. Opinion pieces. Long interviews.
Stuff like that. In other words: people don’t want to spend money on the
‘what’, they want to spend money on the ‘why’..

Our users punish clickbait by refunding

..Gossip magazines, for example, get much higher refund percentages than
average (some up to 50% of purchases), as some of them are basically clickbait
in print. People will only pay for content they find worth their money ... As
a publisher, you have to invest in incredible journalism to be able to sell
them on a per-article basis. Luckily, a lot of incredible journalism is being
produced every day."_

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akavel
I'm not Dutch-speaking and tried registering -- successfully! There seem to be
some purely English language articles/newspapers already there: I've found at
least _The Economist_ and _WSJ /Wall Street Journal_. Every new account seems
to get free 2.50 EUR credit on start; later you can apparently pay with PayPal
or credit card. (Note however, that I haven't actually tested reading any
article or paying yet.) To create an account you have to "read" some Dutch --
but some common sense + Google Translate was enough for me to get through.

 _[Update]_ Tried reading something (from WSJ, fully in English indeed), then
tested and confirmed that the "refund" works. Just FYI ("random trivia"), when
clicking "refund", there's additional dialog asking for the reason. Translated
by Google Translate roughly as:

 _Why do you want your 29 cents back?_ _We want to know why you want your
money back, so we can tell the author and publisher._

 _[ ] I accidentally clicked on the article_

 _[ ] I find the price too high_

 _[ ] The article was too short_

 _[ ] The article was too long_

 _[ ] The article was not what I expected_

 _[ ] The article was not legible_

 _[ ] Other..._

~~~
JeanMertz
Awesome that you got it working. We are working on launching an English
version in the near future.

Regarding the refund reasons:

If you refund within a given amount of time, you actually don't have to
provide any reason at all (since we figured you didn't read the article
anyway). It is only after that time, that we ask you for a reason, so
publishers get a better understanding of why people chose to ask for a refund
after reading an article.

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tinco
Just want to add something to the conversation about The Netherlands. A cool
thing about this startup is that one of its founders (alexandernl here on HN)
is a celebrity in The Netherlands. I would guess if you'd go to a random Dutch
street and show people his picture, 7/10 adults would recognize him. Alexander
is a frequent guest who explains tech products at one of the NL's most hot
prime time shows, he's basically the person who explains what an iPhone app is
to everyone over 30 in the Netherlands (assuming everyone under 30 already
knew).

Now The Netherlands isn't such a big place, just 17 million people or so, so
in the grand scheme of things this is not so big of a deal. But it's important
to note that were Blendle founded in a bigger country this might not have gone
as well at all. How would you both get a foothold in the press industry _and_
get major coverage on national TV? Alexander is in exactly the right place and
at exactly the right time.

Now they've effectively proven their worth on a reasonably large scale,
they've used that cred to break into the NYT and the WSJ. How's that for an
awesome business plan? I think it's the best advantage small European
countries have. We've got <20m inhabitant language isolated nations all over
the place. Even the celebrities with prime time are accessible. If you're in
the startup scene in NL, odds are you are friendly with someone who is
friendly with Alexander.

edit: of course, he has an awesome co-founder and technical team as well, you
can't be successful without the tech being top notch.

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kriro
The model seems to work and they seem to have great traction. I can see all
the objections but the proof is in the pudding. Really liked this sentence
from their answer to a critic:

"""You said you talked about the idea of Blendle when I was two years old. But
Blendle is not an “idea”. Blendle is about execution. And because of that
we’ve gathered more than 140.000 users in The Netherlands with a $0 marketing
budget."""

Seems somewhat reasonable to assume this could be transfered to the
hyperbroken academic publishing model (publisher resistence is a lot higher
and older articles are worth more than for typical newspaper stuff though).
One source, micropayment per article, refund policy. One can dream ;)

~~~
phreeza
Here is an even crazier idea: (micro)pay to cite instead of (micro)pay to
read. Just going to put that out there.

~~~
kriro
That's actually a pretty cool idea. Once there's infrastructure in place, it's
easy to enforce, too. Turn in a paper and upon acceptance you are billed for
the citations. Money = reputation also kind of works and is a nice incentive
to write good papers that get cited often.

[downside is obviously that it kind of also creates an incentive to cite less]

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birger
I'm one of the 'didn't pay for newspapers before' and right now spend a couple
of euro's a month on Blendle.

Articles cost between € 0,10, and € 0,50. If you buy so much articles from one
paper / magazine that it is cheaper to get the whole edition, you get the
whole edition. Refund work perfect. You don't like the article -> click ->
money back. No questions asked.

~~~
michaelchisari
_You don 't like the article -> click -> money back. No questions asked._

That right there might be the most revolutionary part of their approach to
online micro payments. You could apply it to so much.

~~~
JeanMertz
It's also something we are very proud of.

It turns out, if you give people the opportunity to read in an elegant and
easy way, and provide articles written by great journalists, the refund ratio
stays very low (avarage of 5%).

Of course, the flip side of that (as the article mentions) is that click-baity
articles tend to get a high refund ratio (sometimes up to 50%). But such a
"negative" result might actually be a net-positive for journalism in general.

~~~
kriro
This data is also extremly valuable for journalists. I can envision someone
becoming a better journalist by optimizing for lower refunds. A good
journalist will use this as a weapon. Quite often you can't really be sure
about the quality of your piece. Now you have an interesting data point.

~~~
the_ed
Indeed.

If Blendle continues to be successful this could get very interesting though.
As described in the article linked here, it's a great metric. And their
publishers will also start to use their metric. So -while they now describe
the Blendle-revenue as an extra- this will actually change the way we deal
with the 'print' data which is now accessible online, creating a new dynamic.
This will surely have an impact on the print version of these magazines as
well, I can imagine, making Blendle a content driver(shaper?) and not 'just' a
source of 'extra revenue' as they tend to see it now.

If it all takes off impact will, imho, be different than we can probably
predict now, even though we can make some estimates of possible directions.
Some people will be happier with the results after -say- five years than
others. Time will tell.

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haneefmubarak
Have you guys considered a Spotify style subscription model? Say, where I as a
reader would pay a fixed monthly fee but would then be able to read as many
articles as I wanted from the various sources you guys support throughout the
month? Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional
to the time or number of articles I read from each.

If you have, what were some of the pros and cons you saw in something like
that?

~~~
jacques_chester
> _Of course, the fees would be split across the publishers proportional to
> the time or number of articles I read from each._

This has been tried several times without success (Kachingle, Contenture,
Readability), possibly because it was all being done on the open web or
through proxies, for too little money.

The main problem is that tracking visits on the open web is unreliable with
the current approaches.

Blendle arrived after tablets were common, so they can use the proxy model,
and they're not doing it on subscription so they don't need to establish a
viable minimum monthly amount in the mind of consumers. On the other hand they
face the taxi fare problem, which subscription schemes don't.

I started work on my own approach in 2008 and so became waylaid by the
tracking problem; I have a patent pending but it's possible I simply moved too
late.

On the other hand, my design works for the open web, for mobile, for apps, for
games, for music, basically for anything without first needing the protection
and support of a walled garden like an app talking to a de facto proxy server.

~~~
girvo
_> taxi fare problem_

Do you mind expanding on that?

~~~
jacques_chester
I poked around on Google, can't find where I first saw the term.

Many people prefer fixed prices to pay-by-use. Taxis are paid-by-use, but in
some cities you can pay a fixed fee to be taken to the airport. Even if people
are told and shown that the fixed fee costs more, many will pick it over a
regular fare structure because it is fixed.

For the same reason many people pay for phone data they don't need and so on.
The value comes from not needing to consider the price once it has been paid.

Some micropayment schemes always had the sense that one was potentially
running up a huge bill; Tipjoy had this problem.

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recursify
Great idea - I'm happy to pay $50-$100 a year on good journalism, I just don't
know where I want to spend that money and on what type of articles. The one
click pay and refund policy sounds good.

Can't wait until you get more North American publications :)

~~~
jurre
Awesome to hear! :) If you want to stay tuned on when we'll launch in your
country you can sign up here:
[https://launch.blendle.com](https://launch.blendle.com)

~~~
maze-le
yeah, just registered, I hope you will start this service in germany too!

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bachmeier
This is something I've wanted for years. I wish I knew the price though. There
is a tendency to overshoot on the price initially and the result is turning
off most of the potential market.

~~~
alexandernl
Articles cost between €0,10 and €0,30 for newspaper articles. Between €0,20
and €0,40 for magazine articles.

~~~
walterbell
Does the purchase price include user rights comparable to other digital
content, like ebooks? E.g. can the article be downloaded for offline reading
or searching?

~~~
jurre
I'm not sure about the specific legalities (I'm a developer at Blendle) but
our iOS client offers offline support and we integrate with services like
Pocket.

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phreeza
I feel like the 'no questions asked' (or 'one question asked' as akavel points
out) refund is really the killer feature here. It aligns incentives for
journalists and outlets correctly, provides a feedback loop, and it also
lowers the hesitation to pay, all at the same time.

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icemelt8
This is very very beautiful. As a owner of an Auto Industry Magazine in
Pakistan. I would love this, since my magazine subscriptions are going down.

And my site isn't generating money.

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alper
This might be one of the cases where being in a small country is useful. You
can get significant coverage to validate a model quickly before exporting it
internationally.

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wouterinho
Quality of content in this way can be measured in these micropayments +
refunds instead of points/votes. Down with clickbait articles and up with good
content.

By the way, I also fit the target audience: not buying newspapers, but I have
added money to my Blendle account and spend it every now and then.

I am wondering about the economics though: the traction seems good, but is it
enough to really add value for the publishers? I'd love to see more numbers on
this.

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Rainymood
Really cool! As a dutch student (econometrie) I do not / didn't know that
anyone used this. Kind of silly since it was right under my nose.

Very awesome :) if you guys need a werkstudent as a financial analyst or just
a quantitative guy who likes to play with code and excel sheets ;)

~~~
JeanMertz
We're hiring! Send me a mail at jean[at]blendle[dot]com and I'll make sure it
gets to the right person.

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ersii
You mentioned you have plans for expanding internationally. Any comments on
that? :-)

(I like the idea and I wouldn't mind to pay for things I read that interests
me, unbundled. So you'd be welcome to sign up some Swedish papers!)

~~~
funzoneq
We are working on it. But we have to reach agreements with all individual
publishers, which takes a lot of negotiations and time. We also need to reach
'a critical mass of publishers', before we can launch in a new country.

But as listed in the article, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times and
the Washington post are coming. So we are beefing up our international outlet.

~~~
ersii
Does that mean you're opening up account creation for the US, when that
content has come around? Or would I, as a Swede be able to create an account
and read (and pay) for the US content? (I guess I'm asking about 1) Account
creation 2) Geographical restrictions)

~~~
jurre
We try to sign publishers without any geographical restrictions, but I think
it's ultimately up to them.

~~~
ersii
So that means you'll open up world-wide account creation when you have some
non-dutch content available? :-)

~~~
JeanMertz
We already support world-wide account creation by simply clicking through the
"launch" page in the top right corner.

Of course, the site will still show up in Dutch, but there is an
"international"[0] section where you can already read The Wall Street Journal,
The Economist, and soon more.

[https://blendle.com/kiosk/internationaal](https://blendle.com/kiosk/internationaal)

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gabeochoa
Would like to see this process taken across the web. As someone who doesn't
read news articles too often I don't mind paying but can't justify a
subscription.

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bewo001
What? Newspapers actually doing innovative things instead of suing Google or
pressing politicians into passing ridiculous bills to preserve their old
business model?

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Plantagehouder
Many dutch newspapers (nrc,ad,trouw,etc) offer student discounts on their
subscriptions. Do you guys have any plans for something similar?

~~~
JeanMertz
Sorry, no student discounts in our plans right now. But this is a very
interesting idea.

You can however couple your existing newspaper subscriptions with Blendle,
giving you access to all of their articles in our kiosk.

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TylerE
Why do startups keep thinking micropayments is a thing people want?

~~~
willlma
Because people consume a lot of little things. Ads are essentially involuntary
micro-payments. It's a way of aligning the interests of content-creators and
with their users rather than their sponsors. What's wrong with micro-payments?

~~~
hobs
> What's wrong with micro-payments?

Nothing inherently, its just that they are generally used to extract more
revenue from the existing model instead of supplant existing incomes.

There have been several studies about decision making being taxing the brain,
and always being presented with a dollar sign for any part of your experience
can be a bit wearing.

If your domicile had the ability to charge every time you go to the restroom,
I guarantee they would just raise the rates until you considered pooping your
pants.

~~~
willlma
> they are generally used to extract more revenue from the existing model
> instead of supplant existing incomes

Blendle is doing the latter and I would only argue for micro-payments in this
context.

> If your domicile had the ability to charge every time you go to the
> restroom, I guarantee they would just raise the rates

Going to the bathroom is something you need to do, not something you choose to
do, and the friction of finding another bathroom every time you want to is
quite high. Reading articles is by no means a need and free alternatives are a
button tap away. You're comparing one of the most demand inelastic services
with an incredibly elastic one. They will never be able to extract unfair
prices because readers will simply stop reading.

So I agree that micro-payments have their place, and that place is the digital
world where we consume many small things that we could do without if we
thought that they were too expensive. The world that most of HN lives and
breathes. But to write off micro-payments entirely is short-sighted.

As for your original question, the reason a lot of people think that micro-
payments are something that people want is probably because of Jaron Lanier's
book, _Who Owns the Future_. It's a good read.

