People are right to complain about paywalling, and if there was a way to use micro-payments to open the door, a lot of independent reporters would probably be for it. The Substack system however has advantages in being relatively censor-proof, while also giving people like me some stability — it’s much better to work for a stable of subscribers than a media corporation.
Discussion
Great seeing you here Matt
The micro payment model will correlate with network effect. If any traditional social media apps had zaps people would be earning insane amounts of money.
That’s coming via zaps ⚡️
Only freedom can be Real.
Media people can be true to themselves and objective facts.
Might be time to talk with Uncle Marty #[2]
Have a solution built for this #[2]
Example of a paywalled article that gets unlocked after a small payment over the lightning network.
Also built a web hook that allows you to auto syndicate your content to Nostr.
welcome to #Nostr 🤙⚡️🫂
You read this yet by #[2]
If only there was a way
Right on Matt!
Why not both?
A per click fee, and a monthly sub. The per click fee could be a great onboarding ramp for subscribers once they get a taste.
I like this arrangement. I paid subscribe to your Substack and get to zap small amounts of sats (that may be worth a lot in the future) on here when I really get something from the article.
your Substack email list is relatively censorship resistant, but the Substack Notes product doesn’t share that property
nostr/zaps should eventually support good micropayment paywalling solutions
⚡️#Zapped⚡️
💜 Followed 💜
🙏 ₿oosted 🙏
🤙 #plebchain 🤙
please check out https://yalls.org/ some time, Bitcoiners have been working on Lightning paywalls for a long time
🤔
nostr:note1t54u7qh2f3nak9wdyr9xyy5yx7aujdrcx7v7fern7as3jqdz3u2saa50h8
You could do a paywall with Bitcoin and Nostr. A journalist would have their own relay in which they publish their content to. Nostriches would pay for access to this private relay, allowing them to gain read access to the content.
until the content gets inevitably rebroadcasted to public relays
Is there no way to prevent your notes from being rebroadcast?
I think the tooling for pay to read more is on its way, I think you might encrypt everything beyond the read more part… this way unlike sub-stack… you could still get the redundancy, censorship-resistance, and distribution reach of nostr, because Matt’s wrong in thinking any centrally controlled entirety is censor-proof.
One might still want to run up a relay for a locals like community for their subscribers and bundle that, these encrypted long form pay to reads can exists there but also could be relayed for reach, specially if a nation state bans the relay.
also think subscription model is important to apply to this pay to read more. In some cases, I want matt to write about what he personally thinks is important, not be driven by the individual articles that get unlocked the most.
Sounds interesting 💡
For micro payments I would prefer to pay per article though. Maybe show title and ingress for free?
I like how republik.ch does it:
Articles can be shared with anyone publicly, but you pay an abo for feed, grouping, categorizing and discussing.
How established is "zapping" and the "value for value" concept on Nostr?
If every reader develops the habit to donate for the content he just read, there is no need for a paywall here.
Any thoughts on this?
You can't focus on finding "the one lucrative concept" in an evolutionary environment.
Generate the best work. IGNORE feedback from people you don't trust. Develop multiple (moral) income streams. Follow what piques your curiosity.
I made SatsStack https://satsstack.io . It's very barebones for now but 🤷
A major threat to Substack is financial blockades by credit card companies. If Visa or MC cut off Substack, the only solution will be using censorship resistant payment methods like Bitcoin.
I'm in favor of a "pay as you go" system. The problem with subscriptions is that I have many journalists I follow on substack, and all of them have their own paywall. It adds up. That being said, yours is exceptionally reasonable for what you provide.
Like your subscribers,
I too am kept in a stable
Generally substack subscriptions are too expensive for me to actually commit, but often I would pay a relatively small amount for content I really want to read. But I hear you, stability has its perks for the creator. Yes talk to #[2] about scribe.
It's better to get zapped on nostr than trust a centralized entity. Isn't subatack controlled by a company?
Great to see you on Nostr, where we like to throw zaps peoples way for…whatever. Welcome!
Thanks for persisting. After the bailout I made all my first year writing students read your Rolling Stone series. Most of them hated me for it. But if I can help them figure out whose analysis to trust and why, then maybe, just maybe, they'll have a chance at navigating the media landscape with agency. Your stack is worth the price... and the work.
It seems unlikely we’ll ever be able to get beyond McLuhan’s observation that the medium IS the message. Platforms have inherent characteristics that transcend content - and digital networks have inherent characteristics that transcend platforms.