By
Bhushan Akolkar
April 26th, 2024
Forbes will use the Unlock Protocol service to accept cryptocurrency for ad-free subscriptions. You can subscribe for premium reading with Ethereum.
Thanks to Unlock’s solution Forbes can now charge a tiny fee per 7 days of ad-free reading. You can also buy 30 days of reading the website without seeing the hateful banners. Subscription is available through the MetaMask, Opera or Coinbase. The first option allows buying one week of reading for ~0.0052 ETH. If you want to buy the monthly subscription, you will have to send out ~0.02 ETH.
A main feature of the offer: it appears only in the crypto dedicated Forbes section. If you read some other news, you will not see the pop-up and the “Pay using Ether” button.
When a user clicks on the button, he will have to use one of three suggested wallets to perform the payment.
Interestingly, you cannot use any other Ethereum wallet to perform the payment. However, installing MetaMask which is open source shouldn’t take much time. Twitter user Thibauld shares his smooth experience while purchasing the subscription.
Smooth experience! And with today's price drop it's even cheaper than $1 / week 😋 pic.twitter.com/FmX1DrLpZF
— thibauld 🌍🔥⏳🦇🔊 (@thibauld) December 18, 2019
It appears that, if you pay when the crypto prices fall, you’ll gain even a bigger price cut. Thibauld managed to buy a 7 days subscription for less than a dollar. Unlock experts claim that they are ready to do a similar website plugin for the entire YouTube, or at least for some of its great publishers.
Once you have completed a transaction, you will receive a notification saying that ads are already disabled across the website. Even if the transaction is not confirmed, you can use all the membership benefits right away. You also get a non-fungible NFT token, which is a virtual representation of your membership. You can not only accept it but also transfer to stores like OpenSea.
A Big Day for Crypto Adoption?
According to the Unlock Protocol blog entry, Forbes believes in shifting human attention. Unlock makes a bet on memberships paid via cryptocurrencies instead of relying on ads or crypto donations. They think that content is a piece of art if it can expand the sight, not just collect occasional visitors who close the tab in a second or two. Many of the websites simply attract visitors via fake news or clickbaits. Forbes aims to deliver the best content.
Some people use adblockers, script blockers and similar things to block ads. However, sites need that ad money to continue providing high-quality content. The online authors typically spend lots of time on the tiny news pieces.
According to Unlock, Forbes is one of the leading financial outlets covering the crypto space, it is “a publication that writes a lot about blockchain revolution.” Forbes indeed made many insightful blasts into what’s going on in the world of Bitcoin.
Unlock post claims that authors often paid according to the amount of time that they manage to steal from the site guests. Unfortunately, instead of producing quality content they trick with search engines or readers. This must be changed. The authors must seek to deliver the best news possible for readers who lurk in the darkest corners of the Web to dig out rare pieces of the real crypto journalism.