
Blendle: Pay-per-article journalism platform that refunds you for clickbait - alexandernl
http://launch.blendle.com/hackernews.html
======
cJ0th
It is an interesting idea and I look forward to see how this will turn out. I
just explored it a bit and so far the implementation seems solid. However, I
reckon that I will probably loose interest very soon because the more I ask
myself: "Is this really worht xx cent?" the more I will conclude that reading
most articles is just a waste of time.

I think it will take some time to figure out what kind of articles and which
audience this platform is actually for.

My hope is that it will find a way to make labor/ cost intense journalism more
economically viable and thus promote it but as of now magazines publish too
many low effort pieces. An extreme example: the WSJ's "Habbits of highly
productive people" costs 39 cents. I read it and if anything somebody should
pay ME 39 cents for wasting my time. ;)

~~~
pbreit
The article price points are always so bizarre. The whole paper is $1.50 or $2
and they want 40c for 1 article?

This is an extremely difficult nut to crack but Blendle's is the best approach
I have seen so far.

I think success will rely upon brand name content, a good preview so buyers
know what they're getting, the auto-refund thing and 10-50c pricing per
article.

~~~
ska
You would need cost per article to be about (cost of paper)/(typical number of
articles someone needs to buy the paper) to maintain revenue.

So this should be a lot higher than (cost of paper)/(number of articles)

Not sure that 40c is right, mind you, just that you can't really compare it to
the total number of articles, if most people don't read most of them.

~~~
alexandernl
Blendle's founder here. Pricing is something that we're going to experiment
with. Nobody knows what the willingness to pay for journalism, yet. So we're
going to figure that out.

I think it'll always be a mix between micropayments and subscriptions:
micropayments if you only read a little, subscriptions if you read a lot from
a specific title.

~~~
JacobJans
I don't think people should pay for journalism. They should pay for
journalists.

What do I mean?

The benefits that we get from journalism are maximized if we have expert
journalists – people who dedicate their lives to being good journalists.

Good journalists need stability. If they depend on the readership rates for
individual articles, they are disencentivized to take the kinds of risks that
a stable institution can afford to give them.

I don't know Blendle's long term plans in terms of supporting quality
journalism – but the micropayment model is at odds with giving stability to
individual journalists.

Hopefully this is something your are thinking about. How can we best support
journalists – and not just individual peices of journalism?

~~~
maxwelljoslyn
(not the person you replied to)

I think you're right. I can't believe I never thought of like that before.

~~~
ska
This is the sort of thing someone like Blendle could choose to do. After all,
just because content is payed by the piece doesn't mean content creators must
be.

------
jonstokes
From the Medium piece:

"Our editors and algorithms help you find the best stuff."

I already have three sets of editors and two algorithms for finding more stuff
than I could ever care to read: they're called "Facebook", "Twitter", and
"Hacker News".

So their curation piece isn't interesting to me at all; only the payments.

Put another way, the web has thoroughly solved the problem of "show me some
stuff that I want to read right now" \-- it's like trying to drink from a
firehose. There is no need for another player in that already crowded game.

Where the web is failing is at funding all this stuff.

I imagine that the answer for this is easy, though: a "read it on blendle"
button for whatever article you clicked through to from FB, Twitter, or HN.

~~~
JeanMertz
You mean a button like on this page? (It's in Dutch, scroll a bit down)

[https://www.vn.nl/het-debat-21/](https://www.vn.nl/het-debat-21/)

We hear you. And we're working on it. This is only the first step of which
many more will follow in the coming months.

~~~
jonstokes
Yep, rockin'. Now please just let me sign up as my own publisher and write
directly on the platform :)

~~~
JeanMertz
Good point. Our current "onboarding process" for publishers is a bit too
heavy-weight to allow "just anyone" – even you ;-) to join Blendle right now.

This is definitely something we're investigating though. And in The
Netherlands, there's already a collective of journalists who created a non-
profit umbrella organisation to represent freelance writers, who have been
onboarded into our system.

Also, the Blendle Button that I linked to above is it's own product, with a
much less heavy-weight onboarding setup. We've already seen great success
using the button on a German site like
[http://uebermedien.de/abo/](http://uebermedien.de/abo/) (in this case, a
flat-fee subscription button). So that's definitely something we'd like to
roll out to as much freelance publishers as possible.

------
ChuckMcM
Excellent concept, and one I've been a proponent of for a while.

I'd like it to have an option (which it may have but I haven't found) to
either not show me stuff I already subscribe to (WSJ, Economist, NYT) or allow
me to enter subscription information so that I would not double pay.

From a consumption point of view there should be a "blendie link" which is
like a URL shortner for articles which connects you through the paywall to the
Blendie version of an article. Then if you share that link it lets other
Blendie subscribers read it in a fairly frictionless way.

~~~
alexandernl
Blendle founder here. It's exactly what we're working on (making articles for
free on Blendle if you already have a subscription), and are already doing
("blendle links") :)

~~~
ChuckMcM
Awesome, I look forward to you becoming the "Google Reader" of pay-walled
content. :-) It has always been a challenge for me that I would be happy to
pay for _an_ article but rarely want to commit to a monthly fee without
knowing if I'll use it enough to make it worthwhile. I really love that you
guys have taken this sort of thing and shipped product.

------
return0
I have privacy concerns with this type of service, especially if it catches
up. I don't want a third party to know what i m reading. Besides i think this
kind of service would be best implemented at the browser level. An insert-
bitcoin-to-read button would be a great experiment worth giving a try in
firefox.

~~~
mrweasel
It can't really be Bitcoin, because the value isn't sufficiently stable, there
has to be some credit card option. Given that a $0.20 credit card transaction
doesn't make financial sense, you need someone to handle micro-payments, and
who's that going to be? PayPal?

We've been needing a micro payment standard since 2000, and one has yet to
materialize.

~~~
ultramancool
> It can't really be Bitcoin, because the value isn't sufficiently stable

Why does that prevent it? Just exchange it immediately via an automated
service (look at BitPay for an example), they take the minute to minute risk
for 1% profit and you don't have to worry about it.

~~~
mrweasel
>Why does that prevent it? Because I would need to buy my Bitcoin in "bulk"
and the publishers would need to set their price in USD, EUR, GBP or whatever,
in order to be able to do proper financial planning.

Given that Bitcoin is as stable as say the USD, someone is going to win or
lose money on the conversion between "real" currencies and Bitcoin. I won't be
risking money becoming worth less, and neither are the publisher.

I don't know BitPay, but I don't assume that they the risk of devaluation of
my Bitcoin for weeks or months. We're not talking about buying just the amount
of Bitcoins I need for one article, say 20 cent, because fees attached to the
credit card transaction your will want to buy at least a little more.

Agreeable there is a point to be made in the fact that the price of each
article is so low that you would only need to buy something like $5 worth of
Bitcoin, and at that point it doesn't really matter if you lose %20.

Still I don't feel like Bitcoin is the right option, but maybe it could be the
backend to a micro payment system. I just don't want to deal with the Bitcoins
or conversion to my local currency.

~~~
ska

       Given that Bitcoin is as stable as say the USD
    

That's a pretty, ah, strong "given".

------
jonstokes
I guess my biggest question as a journalist is not, "what is the point of
blendle?", but rather, "what is the point of the NYT, Times, etc.?"

I'd be happy to just publish directly onto their platform and let readers pay
me directly for the stuff of mine that they want to read via blendle (vs.
paying a publication via blendle, then the publication pays me).

~~~
stuckFounder
NYT is income insurance, aka an employer. They will pay you a reasonable wage
even if you aren't writing stuff people read.

~~~
jonstokes
The number of people in the NY media establishment getting paid a reasonable
wage to write stuff that people aren't reading is a few orders of magnitude
smaller than it was even five years ago, and in another five years it will be
zero.

~~~
danso
Uh no. While revenues and thus hiring have certainly dropped, it is by no
means on a few orders of magnitude. I'd be surprised if it were even on a
single order of magnitude. Even the newspaper I worked at that is in much more
dire straights compared to 10 years ago is about a third its size.

Besides new online outlets, legacy companies are still chugging along.
Starting wage for a reporter at the New York Times is around $70K last I heard
(too lazy to look up the union site)

~~~
jonstokes
I think you misread my comment. I wasn't saying that the entire NY media
establishment is approaching zero employees. I was strictly speaking of the
classic "guy who gets paid to write stuff that nobody reads because it's good
for the community/country/brand/whatever, while people on some other beat
bring in the eyeballs and pay the bills." That's the population that's
shrinking really fast.

~~~
danso
Ah, OK. Sorry, I overestimated your cynicism...I read it as, "the New York
media establishment writes stuff that nobody reads" :)

------
2758252047
I can get to the password creation stage fine, then it says.

> _An error occurred. We 're as baffled as you are. Would you try again
> later?_

EDIT: Apparently you need scripts enabled from _connect.facebook.net_ enabled
to get past the password creation screen. Is this intentional for some reason?
Or just a bug? (I would assume the second, seeing the next screen is the
optional _connect your facebook or twitter account_ page.)

~~~
JeanMertz
Whoops, that shouldn't happen. The team is unable to reproduce this though.
Could you share the link where you tried to sign up?

If you want, you can send me an email (see other comment) and we'll get this
sorted.

------
owenwil
I've been testing this for the last few days and am curating the technology
section. Not paid, just volunteering, and I really like it so far. Great
design, easy to jump into articles and frictionless paying is refreshing. Not
a fan of the left-to-right scrolling, but otherwise it's likely going to be a
boon for news companies who need the money.

~~~
glaslong
My initial impression is similar. The site is well designed and easy to use,
full screen and mobile, and the initial selection of reading material is
encouraging.

Only major pain point is the side scrolling, newspaper column format in the
article view. I strongly prefer the vertical layout the rest of the internet
currently uses.

This applies somewhat to the news feed as well. It feels like it's trying to
replicate a physical news stand, throwing away the lessons learned from Google
Reader and Facebook style feeds.

------
owenversteeg
I think the most important thing with this company is not the UI or the
onboarding or the way they distribute the money -- it's the fact that they got
the approval of the content creators first and then went and started the beta.

Having the NYT, Newsweek, WaPo, WSJ, Businessweek, etc. on board shows that
people can comfortable give them their money and know that it will actually be
going to content creators. In far too many of these type of sites, the vast
majority of the money doesn't actually go to content creators.

------
richmarr
I'm really excited to see Blendle opening their doors to the English speaking
market.

Journalism funded by advertising contains several seemingly-unpatchable
incentive structures... (a) the need to promote the advertising to you,
breaking the concentration you need to read the article... (b) the fact that
getting you far enough to see the adverts is enough to earn revenue so the
content quality can be a secondary priority... (c) the fact that some sites go
as far as mixing journalist-written content with PR-written content so you
can't always tell the difference immediately.

Yes, there are bound to be some UX hurdles, some promises and hand-holding
around privacy, some exploration of subscription or micropayments... but
fundamentally this is a better model as it fixes all of the broken incentives
without (as far as I can see) creating any new ones.

Good luck Blendle & alexandernl.

~~~
alexandernl
Thanks so much.

------
LamaOfRuin
I signed up for the US launch a while ago because I believe in this model, but
I have heard nothing from them since, so my email is already in their
database, so they won't give me "Instant access only today for Hacker News
readers."

Ingenious.

~~~
glaslong
If you're using gmail, the + alias seems to work for signup.

[https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12096?hl=en](https://support.google.com/mail/answer/12096?hl=en)

~~~
LamaOfRuin
That's really not the issue. Yes, I immediately used an email alias to bypass
it, but that doesn't stop it from being a common and annoying issue with these
types of access programs. I think of it the same way as people who kickstarted
a product being told they're not getting access until a bunch of other people
that signed up after it was fully funded.

------
danso
Is there any way to read the articles _not_ in a horizontal layout? Everything
about the site implementation is slick except for that part. It's incredibly
difficult and awkward to read, to be honest.

------
kuisch
Really curious as to where this may go. On the one hand, I'm skeptical. It
feels like there's simply too much friction for a commodity. And doing
relatively well in the Dutch market is one thing. Being able to translate this
to the English market is, of course, a different story entirely. On the other
hand, being able to read individual articles from most of the major
publications in one centralized environment is super compelling to me.

Additionally, I feel like the iTunes comparison that's often made isn't
entirely fair. Before iTunes, I believe there simply wasn't any viable (non-
illegal) alternative to get an individual song. Whereas Blendle competes with,
as mentioned before, loads of other free alternatives online. I'm sure this is
appealing to a core group of fairly voracious readers, but wonder if it
extrapolates to the wider population to such an extent as to sustain an actual
business. Thus far, I believe I've only come across the number of registered
users. This is obviously not very interesting and perhaps they're not allowed
to disclose any other metrics. Especially with the free initial credit though,
I guess you'll find plenty who would be willing to give it a spin. Would love
to see DAUs and/or the percentage of people that tops up repeatedly after
using initial credit.

To be sure, I definitely hope they succeed. It seems like they've executed
very well up to this point.

~~~
jonasty
" Before iTunes, I believe there simply wasn't any viable (non-illegal)
alternative to get an individual song. Whereas Blendle competes with, as
mentioned before, loads of other free alternatives online."

True, but these publishers can, at some point, start making their content
accessible only through Blendle.

Curious loophole though - on platforms such as Pocket, one can go on Pocket's
'recommended' feed, save an NYT article straight to their own Pocket, and read
the article on the Pocket platform, without every going to NYT.com
(circumventing the paywall).

How is that legal? And if it remains legal, will this loophole be a major
concern to Blendle and publishers?

------
impostervt
I like the idea, but the interface is a bit weird. The on-boarding process
uses a Wizard-type flow (one screen for email address, one for password, etc).
Also, reading articles flows left to right instead of top down, which I find
distracting.

Also, I'd prefer if the "Popular" view showed me popular articles, not popular
magazines/newspapers. I don't want to drill down into each to find out what
they have.

------
anamexis
One very small bit of feedback:

During registration, the page says "We have emailed you at <email>. Click the
confirmation link to continue."

But it wasn't obvious what the confirmation link was (it turned out to be the
button labelled "Browse the Blendle newsstand").

~~~
alexandernl
Thanks fixing that.

------
alpeb
Nowadays I try to stay away from magazine articles and get my info instead
from blogs. Traditional journalism calls for too much wording ceremony and
useless anecdata with a very low signal-to-noise ratio.

~~~
petra
That's true, the media is filled with bullshit.But that's what Google, HN and
everybody else usually feeds you.

So what's your method to search or discover good blog content regarding a
specific subject ?

~~~
alpeb
PG's essay "The Submarine"[1] is a nice account to what degree the media is
filled with bullshit.

I actually get pretty much all my tech reads from HN (sometimes browsing the
comments before even reading the article) and from links in Twitter.

[1]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html)

------
reinierladan
Amazing service. I've used it many times to read articles from newspapers I'm
not subscribed to. Also got my money back a couple of times. It just works.

------
karmacondon
I would really really like to pay per article for content from the New York
Times, the Wall St Journal and a few other news sites with annoying paywalls.
Whenever I go to subscribe I think, "This isn't worth it because I don't read
publication X frequently enough to justify a bill of any size on my credit
card". But if this lets me just pay $20/mo to this service and get access to N
articles from a number of subscription based publications, then this is a good
deal. Sign me up.

But I'm just not clear on how this works from looking at the home page. Is
this all paywalled content? Or will I be paying $0.25 for something I could
have read for free, like a sucker?

And also, is the NYT coming out ahead here? Does it make sense to split ~$0.30
per article with blendle instead of getting a $1/week or whatever from a
regular subscription? Because I would hate to get used to using this and then
have it disappear in six months because the basic economics of the business
don't make sense.

If it works out I think it does, this is great. If not, hopefully it can get
there soon.

~~~
gpvos
_> Or will I be paying $0.25 for something I could have read for free, like a
sucker?_

This has happened to me with articles from Trouw (Dutch newspaper) that were
available on their site for free, but were paid-for on Blendle. I really hope
they have fixed this by now.

~~~
gpvos
Nope, still happens.

------
iamnothere
Based on the article on Medium, it appears that often-refunded articles
disappear from the site. Isn't this a potential vector for censorship? Well-
funded adversaries (or well-coordinated activist groups) could use multiple
accounts to "game the system" and eliminate undesirable content.

Hopefully this is addressed somehow. Otherwise it's a fantastic idea.

~~~
JeanMertz
They "disappear", as in, they won't show up at the front of your timeline.
They can still be accessed and/or searched for.

We also have selected curators who can promote articles worthy of your time,
and a daily mail that highlights the articles we believe are interesting to
you.

Gaming the system is something we're always watching out for. This is indeed
something that we'll continue addressing as we learn.

~~~
iamnothere
Thanks, glad to hear that you're thinking about it. Hopefully you won't
encounter that sort of manipulation.

------
brudgers
A bit more: [https://medium.com/on-blendle/with-the-biggest-publishers-
in...](https://medium.com/on-blendle/with-the-biggest-publishers-in-the-
country-on-board-we-re-launching-our-journalistic-startup-
in-e8cb800c28b8#.tto1tuwos)

------
devit
Why not use a flat rate Spotify-like model?

Paying per article seems to have the big issue that you actually have to think
whether you to want to pay or not and might feel cheated if the article is not
as good (they offer refunds, but there must be a limit or catch or everyone
would just refund everything).

~~~
Freak_NL
Blendle has no flat-rate, but if you buy several articles from a single issue
of a publication, Blendle will simply give you access to the complete issue
(e.g., today's New York Times) when the amount you paid for the separate
articles exceeds the cost of the complete issue.

------
daturkel
I'm confused about the payment model. Isn't all Bloomberg Businessweek
content, for example, available for free on their website? Or, even if some
fraction of their content is behind a paywall or not available, shouldn't only
that content be paid in Blendle?

~~~
alexandernl
On Blendle, the participating publishers have all kind of models: metered
paywalls, hard paywalls, no paywalls. Publishers that also put content on the
web without a paywall most often charge very little for their content (less
than 10ct) in return for a human curated, ad free experience. It's like the
business class for journalism :).

------
tsunamifury
Granulizing payments and exposing the pay-logic will just encourage more
complex gamesmanship to gather the pay... and thats already putting aside the
fact that micro payments add stress which has been supplanted by the
subscription model.

------
rossng
blendle.com/signup/account rejects email GMail addresses of the form
username+label@gmail.com - even though the launch.blendle.com/hackernews.html
page accepts them.

It's one of my pet peeves, please fix it!

------
zo1
Getting only two language options when attempting to login: English and Dutch.
URL: [https://blendle.com/login](https://blendle.com/login)

Signup email sends me to a page where I get an error: "Hey, the link you used
refers to a non-existing page. We're sorry!"

URL:
[https://blendle.com/kiosk?campaign=activation&content=button...](https://blendle.com/kiosk?campaign=activation&content=button&medium=email&source=blendle)

~~~
zo1
Edit, Getting "German and Dutch", not English. Sorry, only noticed I typed the
wrong thing now.

------
eveningcoffee
Do they offer anonymous payment options? I do not want that my content is
blocked, filtered by my actual (world wide unique - only one me really)
identity.

~~~
alexandernl
We don't do bitcoin topups right now, you think we should add that?

~~~
eveningcoffee
I am not a bitcoin user (because I have not find a use case for myself), but
this might be an idea.

The problem for me is that if I provide my payment details, I make myself
vulnerable to the person level censoring (as do other users of course). I do
not think that this is where the WWW should be going.

So in principle anything that decouples my identity from the access to the
content but lets me to pay for it might be fine.

If I provide you my payment details I could not be sure that you will not
share my identity (even in a form of an unique id) (or start sharing in the
future).

------
have_faith
I don't want to pay per article and I don't think that it will catch on like
that despite it being an idea that theoretically makes sense. I just don't
think people conceptualise the value of articles like that and will find it a
difficult proposition beyond the generic tech crowd.

------
Cthulhu_
What's up with the HN submission title? Doesn't seem to be related to the
article at hand. See also the HN submission guidelines:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

~~~
dang
When it's clear that a story about a project or startup is being submitted by
the creator, we sometimes cut them slack about how they phrase it. We still
take out linkbait, remove superlatives and gushy language and so on. In this
case I think we just left the title as is.

Another thing we often do in such cases is add "Show HN" if the creator
neglected to. But signup-collection pages are explicitly out of scope for Show
HNs.

------
whazor
I have used Blendle, and currently for me the problem is that most Dutch
people have totally different interests than me. Especially don't like the
articles coming from the emails. There are articles on Blendle I like, for
example the Dutch business news.

~~~
alexandernl
Founder here. Yeah, we used to send everybody the same recommendations, which
makes it all pretty general interest. But we recently started personalizing
the recommendations. It should get much better in the next couple of weeks :)

------
SagelyGuru
I look forward to the day when this will include magazines and papers from
most countries, rather than just Holland or the US. The one-stop access has
attractions. However, at the moment, it does not seem possible to even switch
between these two. (New User)

------
qz_
Are you planning on providing a platform for independent journalists to
publish their content?

~~~
alexandernl
Yes.

------
2758252047
Would there be any method for detecting if an article is available through
Blendle when you hit a pay wall article through normal web browsing (eg from a
Hacker News link) or I guess this would need to be something the websites
implement themselves.

~~~
detaro
Could be build as a browser extension. Match URL against a list of
publications, if the user clicks a button redirect to blendle to check if the
specific page is available. (2 stages/manual step to avoid sending every URL
you visit to blendle)

------
bsharitt
Interesting. I've been toying with a similar, but slightly different pay per
article microtransaction idea. I guess I might as well see what the
competition is doing.

~~~
simonebrunozzi
Would you like to connect? I've been, too, and we might have something in
common to discuss. $myHNusername @ gmail.

~~~
alexandernl
Blendle founder here. Really interested to hear you guys' thoughts:
alexander@blendle.com

------
NietTim
Congratulations on the launch and I'm very curious to see how adoption will be
in the US!

------
yourithielen
Amazing! Where can I find TIME and Newsweek when using an existing dutch
account?

~~~
yourithielen
Newsweek has appeared under 'Engels', still no sign of TIME.

~~~
JeanMertz
It's pretty hectic at the office, but TIME will be available shortly!

update: here it is: [https://blendle.com/issue/time/bnl-
time-20160321](https://blendle.com/issue/time/bnl-time-20160321)

~~~
ryan-c
Threadjacking here, but I cannot make an account with a snkmail.com or
sneakemail.com account. There's some sort of TemporaryEmailServiceDetected
error coming from the backend, which is not what sneakemail is.

Edit: They responded to my email about this:

> Unfortunately it is impossible to sign up with a disposable email service.
> You should be able to access it by using another email service - I would
> recommend you to try that.

------
BrandiATMuhkuh
how did you connections and contracts with all the publisher? It doesn't seem
strait forward to me. I guess personal contacts or so are needed.

------
jccc
"Please upvote and get instant access today" (across the top, with an HN logo)
kind of sounds like "Upvote us on HN, and then we'll give you instant access
today."

Maybe they shouldn't be saying that.

~~~
minimaxir
The copy is now "Get instant access today'" with the same logo and still has
the same implication.

Which is funny because there is no HN API that can actually prove that you
upvoted something.

~~~
JeanMertz
We would certainly _like_ it if you upvoted, but you'll get access either way
:-)

~~~
camikazeg
I first saw Blendle from one of the HN "Who's hiring" threads while looking
for jobs in Utrecht. It was right around the time that there were a ton of
stories about intrusive/tracking ad networks, AdBlockers and Google's
Contributor option came out.

It looked like you were one of the few out there actually building something
that solves the "paying content creators for their work" problem that is the
root of all the ad problems. Kudos to you. It would be cool if you combined
your service with an ad blocker so that users could block ads and feel good
about still giving the creators a way to get paid: join the network!

