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In the old days, you could either subscribe to a periodical OR go to a newsstand and make a one-time payment for a single issue. E-commerce has not yet figured out an analogous model to let me just read one thing without subscribing. We get "free articles" but no "pay a $1 and read this thing" option.

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From the late 1990's to early 2000's, there were a number of online companies (would now be called SaaS) including Qpass in Seattle that solved this problem for companies like NY Times, Wall Street Journal, and many more. Turns out that customers really didn't want to do that for written articles; subscriptions just worked better.

That turned out differently for things like mobile apps.

(Source - worked at Qpass for multiple years.)

This 100%. I'm not going to subscribe to the Economist to read one article every 6 months. I might pay $0.10 to read this particular article though.

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