Goodbye Blog. Hello Letter. (davemorin.tumblr.com) |
Goodbye Blog. Hello Letter. (davemorin.tumblr.com) |
A famous blogger has much better ways to monetise their fame than monthly subscriptions. A blog is a delivery tool to direct people's attention to places - you can sell stuff via your blog. A successful blog is also a powerful reputation-building mechanism. You can sell yourself through your blog. A successful blog is also a great way to open doors - you can introduce yourself thanks to your blog.
By charging your readers, you decrease the value of your blog... to yourself.
How possible is this in general? I don't know. It's the same problem that exists with all other digital media. But I think it's likely that some people will probably find a way to make a living with paywalls or email newsletters, and be happier that way--even if they could make more by selling t-shirts. And I suspect they will do so with a very high price point, because exclusivity always sells.
Note that I'm not saying that paywalls are always going to fail, just that in general the argument "I write good stuff so I should charge for it" is pretty unsteady.
Reputation goes down the toilet the moment you start selling stuff on your blog. Affiliate links are the scourge of blogs, because you don't know whether it was an incidental monetization, or whether the blogger thought "How am I going to get this thing to pay by indirectly and inefficiently taxing readers?", scrounging around for some sort of affiliate junk to claim to be over the moon with.
Examples abound of prominent bloggers flushing credibility and reputation down the toilet when they chose the "Sell" route for monetization.
Reputation itself is a bias, though. Some of the worst blogs are the ones where the writer is clearly preening themselves for future employers.
I'd say there are a great number of exceptions to that. My blog has several thousand subscribers (for whatever you want to define an RSS subscriber as) that have been following my blog for years, they know I have been working at early stage startups for years and they value my opinion, even going out of their way to ask if I have an affiliate link for something I might have mentioned on Amazon before or elsewhere.
One guy even held off buying a big DSLR camera on Amazon for a few days until he was able to get my affiliate code from me while I was out of town.
People can have a voice that is valued online and sell stuff through their writing/blog. Affiliate sales on my blog alone pay my rent while I can run around doing startups with no compensation.
Ken Rockwell comes to mind too. He reviews cameras and has amazing guides. Each camera page has a blurb about asking readers to buy it from sites that have his affiliate code.
Of course that may be just my personal quirk.
That's why I have made the resolution to read as few books as possible, and stopping there. I'm currently selecting the true classics such as Dale Carnegie's books.
I applaud Dave for believing in his position enough to take his writing behind a pay-wall, but I think game theory is going to show this to be a poor solution in the long-term.
I jest, I started an e-mail newsletter myself a week ago ;-) It's interesting to think where all this might go though. I bet if celebs could charge a few bucks a month to follow them on Twitter, there'd be a massive revenue stream there from gossip hungry admirers.
A real subscribe 'button' and proper capitalization could help as well.
I feel like a visionary! I wrote recently that ''we have more written-word saved in Google's servers than all previous written-words combined since the invention of the written-word.''
http://makebelieve1.wordpress.com/2010/08/24/a-pc-appears-on...
I wonder,though, how did Eric Schmidt calculate the ''5 exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003.'' Because I thought about the same thing and I decided that given the incredible variery of mediums from clay tablets to books to computer discs it would be impossible to know. Do you know how he arrived at that number?
And I realize that some HN readers will downvote me for referring to my own blog but so be it, this is a very interesting question for me. I wonder how he arrived at that figure he quoted.
Just kidding. He has no idea if these numbers are true. The important meat of the message, that humanity now stores more information than ever jedi hand and Google helps you make sense of it /hand is what he wants you to believe.
And believe you will. I mean, we're so much smarter than previous generations (as usual), we've got to be doing whatever, better than previously.
It fits their company purpose. They are the good guys. Add 2+2. Why do you have to make so much trouble with these questions?