2) Caveat: I want native advertising to be clearly marked as advertising. In general, I want biases to be forthrightly declared. (I wrote about that recently.)
3) My goal work situation, the ideal daily setup, is to slowly build long-term projects—books—and to write a couple of web articles per day, totaling roughly one-thousand to fifteen-hundred words.
I’m considering what niche to focus on. Currently, I am looking at identity. That is my most enduring interest, the way of examining the world that I default to. It’s a kind of organizing principle.
Martin Weigert of Meshed Society recently made a good point about curation as the future of blogging. He writes that many bloggers have stopped making new stuff, instead “selecting and repackaging existing content.” Weigert continues, “Curation itself is nothing new and has been happening on Twitter and other platforms for many years. But I see signs that more creators have shifted their attention from writing content to curating content lately. Considering the huge quantities of great reading stuff that are published every day somewhere on the web, I think this is a good development.”
I have mixed feelings. Curation is certainly useful, and I appreciate being pointed in the direction of articles worth reading. I click so many links out of Twitter and add them to Instapaper. However, an exclusive focus on curation strikes me as… boring. I feel suspicious of anyone who would want to curate as their main “creative” activity. I’ve never loved Daring Fireball for that reason, and also because Apple fanboys are annoying. Same problem with Tumblr: the vast majority of users are tricking themselves into thinking that collecting images is making something. It’s not. I’m reminded of that horrible saying, “People who can’t do, teach.” My stance is, “People who can’t create, curate.” Creating is a lot of work, but ultimately it is more fruitful and rewarding that curating. In my experience.
I view responding—what I’m doing right now—as different from just saying, “Here, read this.” But, y’know, that said, here are eight of the good articles I read recently:
^^^ “Hunger games” by Will Wiles, an essay on survival-based video games, in which the drama comes from scarcity, from scrabbling to get by. I don’t play games and this was still fascinating.
^^^ David Ulevitch of OpenDNS explains why “Superfish had to happen”: “Internet security and online advertising are fundamentally incompatible. Full stop.”
A lot of “content creators” — the people who make the internet worthwhile — hate ad-blockers. I don’t. I am glad that ad-blockers exist, and I think they’re actually good for the future of “content” and editorial websites in general.
First let’s review the argument against ad-blockers. (Note that sketchy ad-blockers do exist, but assume I’m talking about normal ones like uBlock Origin.) Basically, ad-blockers stop display ads from loading. This means that websites can’t make any money from the visitors who use these browser extensions. (The idea that web ads only pay per click is a common misconception — most professional websites are paid per thousand views.)
Here’s what I think: Making money from advertising is not an inherently terrible plan. Making money from display ads is. Banner ads and noisy autoplay videos are not the only option! Dreaded paywalls are not the only alternative. (Besides, subscriptions won’t be sufficient unless you have a premium legacy brand like The New York Times, or niche appeal like Andrew Sullivan’s political commentary.) Here is an example of what a respectful ad looks like:
Please consider shopping through our Amazon affiliate link to support this website. We rely on readers like you to keep creating the [content type] that you love!
This is basically how fashion bloggers do it, although some of them are less obvious about disclosing their affiliate links. The techies may not have noticed, but fashion and lifestyle bloggers are doing well for themselves! You should be copying them. There are plenty of affiliate programs, and a website with a decent amount of traffic can probably make more money from this type of advertising than from display ads. (Granted, some of the protests were written years ago, so this may not have been true at the time.)
The other excellent idea is sponsored posts. Ars Technica contributor Kurt Mackey commented on the article that I linked above, “There are really two possibilities […]. The first is what we’re striving for: finding the least offensive level of advertising […] while keeping our overhead as low as we can. The second is scary and more malicious, and if Ars ever went this way I would no longer work here: disguising ads as content.” I agree, but sponsored posts don’t have to be disguised. All you need is a disclaimer. Example:
The following post is sponsored by [commercial entity]. Please consider doing business with the brands that support [website]. Thank you!
Readers have been duly informed, and they can scroll past if they don’t want to read an advertorial. Actually, the best type of sponsored post has that disclaimer at the top, and then normal content below that is vaguely related to the field of the sponsoring entity. Here is an example from a Medium article by Jason Harper, “In Defense of the Good Old-Fashioned Map”:
The disclaimer could be a little more explicit — “Sponsored by Marriott” would be better than “Presented by Marriott” — but in general this is well-executed. The visual experience is not annoying, I get to read something enjoyable, and I will associate my happy internet feelings with Marriott. Win-win-win for the creator, the advertiser, and the reader.
People who protest sponsored posts are generally concerned with objectivity. For instance, if you review a product that was sent to you for free, and the company is paying you to review it, can you offer an unbiased review of that product? Well, no, of course not. Presumably the people who worry about this are the same people who complain when news writers use personal pronouns.
What the critics don’t seem to realize is that objectivity is not a thing. It straight-up doesn’t exist. Literally every single person in the entire world is biased — deeply biased — in one way or another, because that is human nature. We’re irrational animals, not logical automatons. The important thing is to declare your biases, for example by disclaiming the sponsored nature of a blog post.
So why do I think ad-blocking will be good for the future of the internet? Because it will push websites to rely less on irritating ads, and implement user-friendly business models instead (which may include sensible advertising). Sure, plenty of websites will be unethical and not use disclaimers, but that’s why we have to be discerning, skeptical consumers, both of media and any products we choose to purchase.
Too long; didn’t read? Here’s my basic point: it is worthwhile to develop a revenue stream that doesn’t annoy your readers so much that they block the revenue stream altogether.
Update: I got bored with The Skimm and unsubscribed.
Disclaimer: The following post contains an affiliate link, although I’m not clear on what actually happens when people click it. Do I get money? Wouldn’t that be awesome? There was talk of a tote bag if ten people sign up through my link, but beyond that I don’t know the specifics. A tote bag! The glory of it!
Recently I subscribed to an email news service called The Skimm, because it was mentioned in a series of interviews by Melody Joy Kramer, in which people who don’t work in news comment on the news (to echo Kramer’s phrasing). One of the respondees recommended The Skimm. I was curious; I clicked; I conquered. (Assuming that your definition of “conquered” is extremely broad.)
Here is how The Skimm’s founders describe their venture: “News is not only our career, it’s our passion. Because of this, we have always been the go-to source for friends seeking the scoop on current events or breaking news. We soon realized three things: Reading the news is time consuming; Wanting to read the news is a hobby; lastly, not everyone has the time or interest.”
The Skimm team overviews current events, then summarizes the highlights into a humorous, easily digestible email. Lighthearted intros can feel awkward when the subject is human rights tragedies, but for the most part The Skimm is a great way to get a quick daily dose of information.
From a marketing perspective, The Skimm’s setup is really smart. There is a downside to serializing what is basically a blog as an email newsletter: old posts won’t continue to gather pageviews and improve your “Google juice”. However, the huge upside is that you don’t depend on anything outside of yourself for traffic.
Okay, it’s not quite that simple. Outside forces do influence how many new people sign up, but your main core of readers has already committed to you and provided valuable personal information. Furthermore, when gathering sponsors/advertisers, you can point out that email has really good stats.
Go ahead and check out the website if you’re interested—The Skimm has an open archive so you can look at recent emails and see if they are something you want in your inbox.
A key tenet of capitalism is that there is No Such Thing as a Free Lunch. Even literal free lunches, which church groups dispense to homeless people, must be subsidized by money-earning workers, who have to purchase their own midday meals as well as someone else’s. When the food seems free, it just means the costs are hidden.
Even those of us who object to capitalism must accept the No Free Lunch principle. Plucking fruit from a wild apple tree might seem like a free lunch, but it isn’t. The labor in that scenario is low-cost, but free would be if an apple materialized in your mouth, pre-chewed. When you gather fruit from a wild orchard, the low energy output returns a low gain. Four apples is not a good lunch!
This is all just cause and effect, but it’s very unpleasant. We want the free lunch. We are both wired and socialized to find free lunch desirable. It’s not bad to pine for a zero-dollar footlong sandwich instead of Subway’s famous fiver. At least, it’s not bad until you start scheming.
Scheming leads nowhere. Work is the only tactic with a reliable payoff. I am very disappointed by the whole setup.
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