$.05 as the author mentions is a ludicrous sum; less than a penny (your 0.3 cent or 0.15c!) is a laughably small sum, and I doubt sustainable (it doesn&#x27;t take much fraud to eat all your profits when you make so little per user.  Think Google&#x27;s customer service is horrible?  Just wait...)  If a customer service agent costs $25&#x2F;hour all in (terrible wages, desk, taxes), every hour they clock in consumes the profit from 500 articles at $0.05 per, even before any other costs.<p>Consider the nyt sells their cheapest digital subscription for $0.60&#x2F;day.  Why on earth should they price articles for less than that, considering you probably aren&#x27;t going to read an article every day?  They certainly don&#x27;t want to cannibalize their subscribers already paying $0.60&#x2F;day.  And note that keeping eg a reporter in Egypt is expensive.<p>Further, even if you reply that they&#x27;re only getting 5 cents for the ads you see (they get more: probably $100+ cpms for pmp ads), they can&#x27;t afford to trade one-for-one: the people most likely to pay not to see ads are often the ones who advertisers most want to advertise to.  ie people with disposable income.<p>I&#x27;d imagine the NYT would need $2+ per article for the economics to work for them.  And quite possibly much more.