>What's really needed is a workable, simple, micropayments model where users can pay just one monthly fee and the sites they visit are compensated automatically.
You've described a multi-site subscription rather than micropayments. Something like this could work if enough quality sites signed on. I'm not going to pay Wired $4/month. (Heck I think I only pay something like $1/month for the magazine.) But I might consider paying $4/month for a subscription covering a wide range of content.
One problem then is that you're putting loads of content behind some sort of paywall. Which means, among other things, that every time someone shares a link of HN for example, people complain. You do some variants of this with digital magazine subscriptions for example, but none of them have taken off.
In addition, if this approach really succeeded at the broadest scale, you're effectively talking about making a large chunk of the Web subscription only.
True micropayments have their own problems. A lot of people have taken a run at this going back to Web 1.0. The transactional friction associated with getting someone to plop down that penny or nickel to read just seems too great--in addition to the issues with a cross-site subscription.
You've described a multi-site subscription rather than micropayments. Something like this could work if enough quality sites signed on. I'm not going to pay Wired $4/month. (Heck I think I only pay something like $1/month for the magazine.) But I might consider paying $4/month for a subscription covering a wide range of content.
One problem then is that you're putting loads of content behind some sort of paywall. Which means, among other things, that every time someone shares a link of HN for example, people complain. You do some variants of this with digital magazine subscriptions for example, but none of them have taken off.
In addition, if this approach really succeeded at the broadest scale, you're effectively talking about making a large chunk of the Web subscription only.
True micropayments have their own problems. A lot of people have taken a run at this going back to Web 1.0. The transactional friction associated with getting someone to plop down that penny or nickel to read just seems too great--in addition to the issues with a cross-site subscription.