Post News, a news and information intensive social media platform is now open to the public.
Post News, or Post was set up to redefine publishers’ engagement with social media and how their readership can be monetized.
It is a platform where publishers can generate revenue from micropayments – a small amount of money paid by users to read individual news items instead of paying subscription fees to news sites. Post saves readers the hassle of going on external free news sites and coping with ads, cookie consent banners, prompt to sign up or subscribe to newsletters, videos popping up right in the middle of a read and other experiences that come with trying to read an article on an external website.
Post offers a platform where users can read news on their own feed and pay only for the articles they read.
In response to criticisms of the micropayments like “who would pay for news that could be read somewhere else for free,” Noam Bardin, CEO and founder of Post explains that Post’s partnered publishers have already found out that users prefer reading news on their own feeds to jumping on external websites – even if it is more expensive to do so.
In its development, Post had initial struggles with publishers’ adoption. Publishers were reluctant because of the subscription structure.
However, it only took the waitlist to 650,000 people after its closed beta launch in 2022, with 430,000 of that number actually creating an account to get the attention of publishers. Today, Post has 25 premium publishers on board including Fortune, The Independent, LA Times, Reuters, MIT Technology Review, USA Today and Wired.
On Post, a publisher decides what to charge for their articles. It may be as low as 1 point, and as high as 89 points.
The micropayment platform is powered by Stripe. It allows users to buy bundle points in packets ranging from 300 points at $4.20 to as much as 10,000 points at $ 126.70.
Apart from publishers, users also get discounts on their purchases from the higher tiers, 1500, 5000 or 10,000 points.
Post generates revenue by taking a small percentage of sales on its platform.
Bardin further explains that the average CPMs publishers are getting from Post’s platform is $25 for a paid post. The highest article got a $300 CPM. But, he adds, publishers are also making an average of $1.30 CPMs from their free posts by way of donations and tips.
