As Elon Musk tinkers with Twitter, which has frustrated its users, a Twitter alternative called Post has been open to the public that allows publishers to interact with people and monetize their readers.
The Post launched in November 2022 with a beta version that grew to 650,000 people on its waiting list, TechCrunch reports.
Of those, 430,000 people created an account on the platform.
“You go on a lot of news sites today and you’re bombarded with these ads, email capture forms, and signups… you just wanted to read an article. And you wanted to read it because someone shared it. So, a one-time transaction, but you’re bombarded” Post founder and CEO Noam Bardin was quoted as saying.
“We believe that with a great user experience, the right price and a lack of friction, we can add a new business model to the world of ads or subscriptions,” added Bardin, formerly CEO of Waze at Google.
However, Post does not want to be another clone of Twitter.
“Their goal is to develop a platform where publishers can generate revenue from micropayments, that is, where users pay a small amount of money to read individual news,” the report says.
The website experienced its peak traffic with more than 5.19 million monthly visits in December 2022, according to data from Similarweb.
Post has signed partners including The Boston Globe, The Brookings Institution, Fortune, The Independent, Insider, LA Times, NBC News, Politico, ProPublica, Reuters, Semafor, SF Chronicle, MIT Technology Review, USA Today, Wired, World Politics Review, and Yahoo Finance.
Some of these outlets are posting manually, while others are experimenting with micropayments, and some are doing both.
The average CPM (cost per thousand) that publishers get from Post’s platform is $25 for a paid post. The highest article got a CPM of $300.
“Publishers also earn an average of $1.30 CPM from their free posts in the form of donations and tips,” according to Post’s CEO.
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