Full Report

I don’t know about you, but the subscription model on Patreons and Substacks that is so prevalent these days in the “content business” does not work for me.

At any one time I may follow about 10 authors. If each one charges but $5 for a monthly subscription this is $50 / month. It’s quite a bit. So then you have to choose.

But it gets worse. The 10 authors I follow tend to change. I follow some people for years, but others I follow for a few months, or some, even for a few weeks. Not because they are bad, but because they cover topics I am not necessarily that interested in. I get curious, learn a few things and move on. So I constantly have to manage this.

That’s not the end of it. I may go through periods when I read a lot. There may also be periods, sometimes months, when I take a break. Touch the proverbial grass. I still have to pay those subscriptions. I guess I can cancel them and then resubscribe later. Again, management and inconvenience.

But subscriptions may not be a solution for every author out there. First, with this management burden, some people may simply not bother. But suppose you do get some subscriptions. Now you have to write, because people are paying you. But authors too sometimes take breaks. Patreon has a feature to “pause” subscriptions. That’s nice, but this goes only for planned pauses. And so sometimes authors simply write not because they have something to say, but to produce for the money that is given to them. You can imagine this affects quality. People write best when they have something to say, not when they write for money.

Sites like Medium tried to fix this problem by charging a flat subscription directly and then sharing revenue based on the number of page views you got. The problem is that they became the gate keepers and you needed a certain number of view to get into the game. Many never did.

There is a solution to all of this and it is called the per-per-view model, sometimes referred to as micropayments. In other words, there are no subscriptions or donations. You pay for what you consume. It solves all the problems mentioned above, both for consumers and for authors.

It has been tried before, but the reason why I think it failed is because it went too big right away. It tried to solve the problem on the entire internet at once.

So here we just do it on our site. Here is how it works: we do not want to be charging your card 5 times in an hour for $0.02 because the payment processors and banks would take all of it in fees. So we charge your card (or you can pay with other methods) once for the typical amounts of $5 or $10 or $20. For that you get a Token balance on this site. These tokens are then used to pay for content published here. You pay only for what you read. And not all content is priced the same. Some bigger pieces that took more time and work to write are more expensive. Others cost $0.01. Etc.

For reference, a Token here is worth about $0.10, in other words, you get 10 for a Euro or a dollar. (Yes, I know 1 EUR is not equal to $1, but different payment methods and processors take different fees. While Euro is worth more, fees tend to be higher and its utility worldwide wide smaller). The general rule of thumb is that you would pay about 1 token for 1 minute of reading–this is not a hard law, but a rule of thumb.

Here is how it plays out: if you spend 30 minutes a week reading/watching/listening to stuff here which is kind of normal, that is 30 tokens, or 3 Euros/dollars per week. In 4.2 weeks in a typical month that equates to $10 / month. So that is your typical subscription on Patreon or Medium. You could of course consume more or less content. Then you will spend more or less per month. But you don’t have to think about this, manage or plan it. You will just consume as much as you feel like and as much as you find interesting.

There is only me here currently as the author, but I hope to ramp this up to about 20 authors within months. With more authors you do not have to think how you are going to apportion those $10, decide who you will “support”. You will read what attracts your attention, you will read good content. Whoever writes the best content gets more of your money. And you can also spend that $10 on content here in 2 weeks if there is lots of good stuff, or in 2 months or even one year. It will depend on how much time you have, and whether good content is simply available here. And you may take a year to spend $10, but others will spend it in 2 weeks. We are not all the same, or in the same sitution! Why should then everyone pay the same?

Sounds like the fairest deal to me. And also to authors. Write good content and you will get paid for it. Maybe it’s not a lot, but it’s that infamous “buy me a coffee” thing. Don’t feel like writing? Don’t write, it’s fine. Most of the authors out there these days are not professional writers. They have jobs and have other things going on.

So, let’s do this.

You must Register to buy Tokens. You get some free ones to get you started (15 Tokens = about 15 minutes of reading) and then if you like what you see, I suggest you buy $5 worth of Tokens (~ 50 Tokens = 50 minutes of reading). No need to worry, you can take a year to spend them. And we will send you a weekly e-mail with news digest.