
Micropayment platform Blendle will launch a US beta in early 2016 - JeanMertz
http://www.niemanlab.org/2015/12/micropayment-platform-blendle-will-launch-a-us-beta-in-early-2016/
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matdemy
I have been using Blendle here in Belgium and I absolutely love it. I'm able
to read the paid articles without having so get the full subscription for a
big array of newspapers (and magazines like the `New Scientist`) definitely
saved me money.

~~~
jvvlimme
Yep, I can agree with this.

They also send out a mail twice a day with headlining stories. There's almost
always at least on story that interests me.

Blendle really is the ideal tool for me. I don't have a problem paying for
quality content, but don't make me take out an XX$ subscription just to read
one article every now and then.

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joopxiv
I've used Blendle and kind of like it, but I wonder what its effect on
newspapers will be. The model of paying per article encourages clickbait.
Their way of countering this is that you have the option to get a refund if
you thought the article sucked, but that will probably only be effective
against the most obvious forms. If it's a bit more subtle, this tactic can
still be very effective.

~~~
mtrimpe
How will it not be effective? When I read an article on Blendle (Dutchie here)
I don't like or think is worth its money I ask for a refund. They even ask you
when you're asking for a refund so they know if the price is too high, article
is too long or the content is too bad. It seems like, if anything, it would
discourage clickbait...

~~~
joopxiv
As I said, I think it will only discourage the most obvious forms of
clickbait. There's still an incentive to make your headlines a bit louder, try
to appeal to more people by making false suggestions, etc.

If you're reading 'De Correspondent' you will see a lot of examples of this:
the headlines are not necessary clickbait in the same way as BuzzFeed is, but
they still over-promise and are often slightly misleading. Especially the ones
they share via social media.

~~~
mtrimpe
I honestly don't see how that's any different from the age-old "tabloid"
papers (like Telegraaf for example.)

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JeanMertz
Our founder, Alexander, just announced this on Business Insider's IGNITION
event.

You can add yourself to our beta invite list at
[https://launch.blendle.com](https://launch.blendle.com). We're really looking
forward to next year!

Let me know if you have any questions.

~~~
intopieces
Do you require users to purchase a certain number of credits up front after
the trial? I see you offer refunds if you don't like the story. What prevents
a person from just reading all they like and then asking for a refund? Is it
possible to copy and paste text from the articles to share on social media? (I
assume you have a share mechanism, but this is more specific). Once I pay for
the article, does it stay in my account forever, or could it be pulled by the
publisher?

The service looks very interesting, and I look forward to trying it.

~~~
JeanMertz
Interesting questions.

Re: Do you require users to purchase a certain number of credits up front
after the trial?

The "trial" is really $2,50 that we give you upon signup. You get another
$2,50 after your first "top up". We show the prices in your own currency, so
no "credits", but top-ups start at $5, and go up from there. You can choose to
auto-topup when your wallet drops below $0.

Re: I see you offer refunds if you don't like the story. What prevents a
person from just reading all they like and then asking for a refund?

The refund mechanism is an important tool to generate trust with the reader.
We don't want you to feel "nickel-and-dimed" and if publisher promised a
certain article through the heading and intro, but didn't live up to those
expectations after reading the article, we encourage you to refund, and tell
the publishers why you asked a refund (through a dialog), so publishers can
learn as well.

We have certain mechanisms in place to prevent abuse of this system, but we're
lenient, and in general we see only about 10% of purchases are refunded this
way.

Re: Is it possible to copy and paste text from the articles to share on social
media? (I assume you have a share mechanism, but this is more specific).

You can. Again, it's built on a mutual-trust system. So far it has worked out
great, if we ever notice the balance tipping, we'll have to tweak the system.

Re: Once I pay for the article, does it stay in my account forever, or could
it be pulled by the publisher?

It does stay in your account. We don't have any mechanism to actually _remove_
articles from our platform. Highly occasionally, we remove the content of an
article, because it was published by accident (f.e. a newspaper delivering
next days newspaper too early, and it containing the score of a pre-recorded
contest).

~~~
intopieces
Thank you for your reply! One more question: there was some kerfuffle about
The New York Times changing a story they had already published [0]. Will your
platform allow this? I find it to be highly unethical, but I could see
publishers demanding to have that ability. To put it simply, there is value in
publications printing retractions, and I hate to see them go in favor of
sneaky edits.

[0][http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/360545/new-york-
times-...](http://www.poynter.org/news/mediawire/360545/new-york-times-
changes-its-hillary-clinton-story-again/)

------
vincentkriek
There are a lot of numbers coming out of Blendle but I would like to know what
actual revenue Blendle is getting. I don't believe the micropayment method is
the way to go and I see more value in payed subscription model. I think a lot
of the numbers they publish include people in free trials or people buying one
or two articles and that's it.

Blendle's got a lot of hype behind it, I wonder if it's really taking of.

~~~
thetmkay
I spent a week or two looking into and evaluating micro payments for news, and
I share your concerns.

The line I hear out of Blendle though is that it's part of an ecosystem, i.e.
one avenue of payment options. I can imagine a one-off paywall working for
some content, but I doubt it will be the dominant method of choice.

Newspapers are only half entertainment, but the entertainment industry pivoted
from per-product to aggregated subscription in the age of the Internet. Of
course Blendle itself is a platform, tweaking its business model should be
within scope.

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pbreit
I have historically been pessimistic on "micro-payments" but I feel like
there's gotta be a way to make it work and this is the best approach I've seen
so far. It's going to take reasonable pricing, frictionless payments and, most
importantly, publisher credibility.

For NYT/WSJ, I could see up to 50c/article. Medium maybe 25c. The
Information/Pando possibly up to $1.

------
henrik_w
Interesting points on micropayments from Clay Shirky:

"Why Small Payments Won’t Save Publishers"

[http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-
wont...](http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2009/02/why-small-payments-wont-save-
publishers/)

~~~
skrebbel
I guess this tweet is relevant then:
[https://twitter.com/cshirky/status/605576180851314688](https://twitter.com/cshirky/status/605576180851314688)

~~~
JeanMertz
Related, this[0] Monday Note is interesting as well:

Last November, in a rather blunt way, I expressed my reservations regarding
Blendle’s model (see The New York Times and Springer Are Wrong About
Blendle[1]). My concerns ranged from the abundance of free content available
on the web (especially in English), to the damage inflicted on the “cross-
subsidy model” in which baseball coverage pays for the Kabul bureau, to the
risk associated with the “unbundling” of news (and its impact of publishers’
ARPU).

To their credit, Blendle’s co-founders Alexander Klöpping and Marten
Blankesteijn seized on my questioning and engaged me in an ongoing discussion
focusing on business models that could ensure the survival of quality
journalism. This could be a crucial factor in Blendle’s fate: this company has
been created by journalists who fervently defend quality journalism and
believe that great editorial must be paid for. In spite of my initial
reluctance, the more I explored its model, the more I came to believe it
should be tested and carefully analyzed, essentially because it is much more
sophisticated and carries more potential that a first look might lead one to
believe.

[0]: [http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-
someth...](http://www.mondaynote.com/2015/10/05/blendle-is-up-to-something-
big/)

[1]: [http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/11/02/the-new-york-times-
and-...](http://www.mondaynote.com/2014/11/02/the-new-york-times-and-springer-
are-wrong-about-blendle/)

------
fesja
I just want to say that I love what you are doing and specially how you are
executing. Keep up! And come to Spain soon :)

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timwaagh
although i love the fact that this is a dutch startup (waves the red-white-
blue) I really feel paying real money for newspaper articles, some persons
opinion and so forth is not really going to happen in a world where such
content is readily available for free. and a world where you have to go to
some trouble to avoid getting it basically thrown at you. In fact I'd pay
quite a bit for a service which guarantees to keep me isolated from this kind
of content.

~~~
JeanMertz
What we've found at Blendle, is that it's not the regular newspaper articles
that sell best, but in fact it's the bigger opinion pieces, and more
importantly the more in-depth background articles.

Please remember that these background articles often require months of
research and journalists going abroad. These types of in-depth articles are
hard to get on most blogs and/or free news sites.

Without these in-depth articles, our news consumption would be very shallow.
This is what triggers people to pay for articles on Blendle, they want to be
informed, they want to know more about a subject and/or event that recently
happened. They probably already _know_ that it happened and what the end
result was, but now they are interested in _why_ it happened and _how_ the end
result came to be.

