People don’t want to buy subscriptions just to read the one odd article. But they’re happy to pay 10 cents or 10 rupees to read an individual article in their favorite publications. UPI and other A2A RTP methods of payments now make it easy to make such small value payments.<\/p>\n
Still per article<\/em> sales is not a thing.<\/p>\n I speculated in Why Publishers Don\u2019t Sell Individual Articles<\/a><\/strong> that the constraint is not on the demand-side or with micropayments but on the supply-side: Put simply, publishers don’t wish to sell individual articles<\/em>.<\/p>\n In Musk Twitter Will Take Per Article Sales To The Next Level<\/strong><\/a>, I predicted that X fka Twitter will change that. A year later, the buzz around Twitter Money<\/em>, the micropayment that was touted to enable the sale of individual articles, has died. It’s not yet possible to buy single articles on Twitter. My post has aged badly.<\/p>\n Paywall is still a thing on Bloomberg<\/em>, ET Prime<\/em>, New York Times<\/em>, Wall Street Journal<\/em>, Washington Post<\/em> and other leading publications of the world.<\/p>\n But despair not. There are many ways to scale the paywall.<\/p>\n 1. Social Media Backdoor Link<\/strong><\/p>\n You might have come across very long URLs like<\/p>\n https:\/\/economictimes.indiatimes.com\/prime\/corporate-governance\/how-a-little-known-delhi-based-company-bought-nasdaq-listed-ebix-out-of-bankruptcy\/primearticleshow\/113675485.cms?giftid=q7v19pdhaic53yod3pgd0jtbyoe6a5z3&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=socialsharebuttons&utm_source=clipboard_web.<\/p>\n They provide a backdoor to the article without hitting a paywall.\u00a0The crud after the ? sign looks ugly but don’t delete it.<\/p>\n PSA: URL tracking codes are annoying but, before deleting them indiscriminately, remember that some of them provide free access to premium content e.g. WSJ Social Backdoor Link.<\/p>\n \u2014 Ketharaman Swaminathan (@s_ketharaman) May 16, 2018<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n