This is why we can not have nice things online....
Why not implement a paywall that lets you pay for an article?
The tech already exists, see [1] and [2]. And if you feel bad about leaving your credit card details somewhere, you could use a plugin like Alby [3].
Due to interchange fees on the major processing networks it is not practical to charge less then $1. Fees per charge are something like 30 cents plus percentage of transaction.
Because a very small amount of the articles are worth paying for, so they bundle the product together to with all the low quality articles that no one will pay for.
And how will I know if an article was worth paying for until I've already read it? This might work with a site I frequent and have grown to trust but most of the views on most articles aren't regulars of the publication itself but probably got there because it was shared or came up as a search result
It is a tricky situation. On the one hand, subscription models are great as they don't incentivize flashy click-bait as much and reward steady, high-quality content. On the other hand, you don't know whether a publication is worth subscribing to until you've sampled some of their content.
The "free-articles-then-paywall" model seems to be working for a lot of publications to tackle this and get people to pay, but when your limit is 1 article a month, you can't be too shocked if people go around it. I like the idea of TechCrunch free + paid content, but I wonder how it's working for them.
Why not implement a paywall that lets you pay for an article? The tech already exists, see [1] and [2]. And if you feel bad about leaving your credit card details somewhere, you could use a plugin like Alby [3].
[1] https://lnpay.co
[2] https://coil.com
[3] https://getalby.com