3 ms·

Yes, why is HN driving traffic to an ad?

by aroon 17y ago

KirinDave 17y ago
Because Giles is a cult of personality. He's the Matt Lesko (http://bit.ly/cEUsK5 http://bit.ly/cEUsK5) of Hacker News. You know every fiber of his being is lousy and watching him makes you a worse person, but his outrageous suits keep your eyes glued. In other words, he's a linkbaiter.
- Semiapies 17y ago
  Maybe it's an answer to the ad problem. Don't try to make content funded by ads, just make ads that look like content.
  - thesethings 17y ago
    I agree with this, but I frame it differently: You're going to make a lot of stuff. Some you will give away, some you will charge for. You pretty much HAVE to give _some_ stuff away not because we live in a post-Napster, open source apocalypse where everybody expects things to be free, but just because you need something to get people to give your idea/song/software a chance. As I have a lot of friends in bands, I often come back to music: "You will make a lot of music. You will probably give most of your recordings away, with the exception of special packages now and then. You will probably almost always charge for your live performances, with the exception of a few special occasions. You will regularly make some thing related to your art and charge for it (screen-printed posters, sweathshirts, etc.)" People who make any kind of intellectual property can basically put it in one of two buckets: * stuff i will charge for * stuff i won't charge for, but is used to attract attention/keep people feeling involved The difference between the two isn't arbitrary, but it isn't exactly based on qualitative difference. It's mostly based on distribution, limitations of medium, and a stuff like that. You'll probably tend to give away stuff that's easy to pass around, and charge for stuff that's not. Not in a piracy-centric mindset, just thinking mostly of friction, etc. It's entirely possible the thing you charge for doesn't take more work to do than the things you don't charge for.
    - Semiapies 17y ago
      I don't see it, myself. He's selling a video file, and those move around like water.
      - thesethings 17y ago
        It's true that video files aren't so hard to pass around. But it's way harder to pass videos around than a blog post links. My main point is was related to your interesting "ads that look like content" observation: That there can be little difference between the things that many people give away (ads), versus the things they sell, especially in terms of labor by the creator.
  - gilesbowkett235 17y ago
    very close (in my opinion). it's the opposite of the ad problem. while lots and lots of people were arguing about how to make ads suck less, I was writing an ad entertaining enough, and with enough of an actual point, that people would tell each other to read it. that's the solution: ads that don't suck, and not only don't suck, but are so far from sucking that ten or twenty years ago, they would have been books, magazines, or articles unto themselves, and would have sold as products in their own right. I mean seriously, if you decided not to buy my video, but you still went and took this philosophy of "create stuff and get it to people" as a guiding principle for your career, it would improve. the ad debate was hilarious to me because it was all going on while I was writing this thing. this isn't the solution to the ad problem, it's the antithesis. at one end you have people who make premium content, and host ads nobody wants to see, complaining that nobody wants to see their ads. on the other, you have one blogger, on his own, in his boxers, giggling at home and writing an epic ad which people are going to post on Hacker News for free without any action on his part. the answer to the ad problem is don't even have an ad problem. just skip the whole thing. if you do business a different way, where all your marketing is about giving away stuff worth getting, you'll never have to care about an ad problem in your life.
- _pius 17y ago
  You know every fiber of his being is lousy and watching him makes you a worse person, but his outrageous suits keep your eyes glued. Kinda harsh, no?
  - KirinDave 17y ago
    Have you read the first quarter of the article? If there were a Programmer's Tool Academy, he could just read that as his introduction speech.

Yes, why is HN driving traffic to an ad?

by aroon 17y ago

Yes, why is HN driving traffic to an ad?

Because Giles is a cult of personality. He's the Matt Lesko (http://bit.ly/cEUsK5 http://bit.ly/cEUsK5) of Hacker News. You know every fiber of his being is lousy and watching him makes you a worse person, but his outrageous suits keep your eyes glued. In other words, he's a linkbaiter.

Semiapies 17y ago
Maybe it's an answer to the ad problem. Don't try to make content funded by ads, just make ads that look like content.
- thesethings 17y ago
  I agree with this, but I frame it differently: You're going to make a lot of stuff. Some you will give away, some you will charge for. You pretty much HAVE to give _some_ stuff away not because we live in a post-Napster, open source apocalypse where everybody expects things to be free, but just because you need something to get people to give your idea/song/software a chance. As I have a lot of friends in bands, I often come back to music: "You will make a lot of music. You will probably give most of your recordings away, with the exception of special packages now and then. You will probably almost always charge for your live performances, with the exception of a few special occasions. You will regularly make some thing related to your art and charge for it (screen-printed posters, sweathshirts, etc.)" People who make any kind of intellectual property can basically put it in one of two buckets: * stuff i will charge for * stuff i won't charge for, but is used to attract attention/keep people feeling involved The difference between the two isn't arbitrary, but it isn't exactly based on qualitative difference. It's mostly based on distribution, limitations of medium, and a stuff like that. You'll probably tend to give away stuff that's easy to pass around, and charge for stuff that's not. Not in a piracy-centric mindset, just thinking mostly of friction, etc. It's entirely possible the thing you charge for doesn't take more work to do than the things you don't charge for.
  - Semiapies 17y ago
    I don't see it, myself. He's selling a video file, and those move around like water.
    - thesethings 17y ago
      It's true that video files aren't so hard to pass around. But it's way harder to pass videos around than a blog post links. My main point is was related to your interesting "ads that look like content" observation: That there can be little difference between the things that many people give away (ads), versus the things they sell, especially in terms of labor by the creator.
- gilesbowkett235 17y ago
  very close (in my opinion). it's the opposite of the ad problem. while lots and lots of people were arguing about how to make ads suck less, I was writing an ad entertaining enough, and with enough of an actual point, that people would tell each other to read it. that's the solution: ads that don't suck, and not only don't suck, but are so far from sucking that ten or twenty years ago, they would have been books, magazines, or articles unto themselves, and would have sold as products in their own right. I mean seriously, if you decided not to buy my video, but you still went and took this philosophy of "create stuff and get it to people" as a guiding principle for your career, it would improve. the ad debate was hilarious to me because it was all going on while I was writing this thing. this isn't the solution to the ad problem, it's the antithesis. at one end you have people who make premium content, and host ads nobody wants to see, complaining that nobody wants to see their ads. on the other, you have one blogger, on his own, in his boxers, giggling at home and writing an epic ad which people are going to post on Hacker News for free without any action on his part. the answer to the ad problem is don't even have an ad problem. just skip the whole thing. if you do business a different way, where all your marketing is about giving away stuff worth getting, you'll never have to care about an ad problem in your life.
_pius 17y ago
You know every fiber of his being is lousy and watching him makes you a worse person, but his outrageous suits keep your eyes glued. Kinda harsh, no?
- KirinDave 17y ago
  Have you read the first quarter of the article? If there were a Programmer's Tool Academy, he could just read that as his introduction speech.