It would be nice for there to be a bit more institutional knowledge on how to get people to pay for your product among these experiments.
Too many times I see projects say they're not making much money from these sorts of efforts, but when I go to the project I can't even figure out how to give them money! LWN is a prime example of lost opportunities (count how many steps it takes to go from "see subscriber link" to "be subscribed")
Personally, I'd throw something in the footer of every page of this book to link to a payment page. Make it easier for people to give you money after reading something interesting! Nagware might be annoying, but "this book is not free", right?
EDIT: Just went through the LWN subscriber flow. It took me... 10 steps? to get subscribed. I've dropped out of this flow before
In particular "this book is not free" while giving the whole thing away really emphasizes the dissonance you have to deal with when exposing yourself like this but it does so transparently and unpretentiously, I think.
Maybe I'm naive, but I doubt specifically saying "don't pay me just $5" will increase his ability to make money. I do enjoy his snarky tone, but seriously, telling people to either pay $39 or just use it for free doesn't make much sense at all.
Well I think it's mostly a case of deciding how much of a priority it is and how that's reflected in the overall design.
As you say, if you make easy for people to pay you, more people will pay.
Ease, I think, is a function of the quality of offering, i.e how good it is such that people will more readily part with their cash, and the actual ease of making a payment.
If you have great content and people want more yet the path to subscribe is tucked away so no one can find it, people won't pay (or can't in extreme cases).
If your content sucks, including devaluation via aggressive pushes for payment, I don't think people will be so keen to pay.
That said, I think more people tend to pay for the latter. Your get rich in 30 days with a pay now button every other paragraph and huge discount-that-isn't-a-discount is a prime example.
Too many times I see projects say they're not making much money from these sorts of efforts, but when I go to the project I can't even figure out how to give them money! LWN is a prime example of lost opportunities (count how many steps it takes to go from "see subscriber link" to "be subscribed")
Personally, I'd throw something in the footer of every page of this book to link to a payment page. Make it easier for people to give you money after reading something interesting! Nagware might be annoying, but "this book is not free", right?
EDIT: Just went through the LWN subscriber flow. It took me... 10 steps? to get subscribed. I've dropped out of this flow before