5 ms·

I'd just rather be done with advertising on the web completely. Bring on Brave's Basic Attention Token.

by imron 9y ago

DoreenMichele 9y ago
So, blockchain advertising? This is a fix? I'm a blogger. Everyone bitches about ads, but removing ads did not cause an uptick in tips. I later added Patreon. Ads are the magic that allow services to be given away for free to people who have zero willingness to pay for said services. The bills need to be paid somehow. Working for free doesn't keep people fed. I am still trying to figure out how to provide quality content that I think is meaningful and also monetize it. I would prefer to remove ads from my sites. But I am really sick of being poor, which no one has any sympathy whatsoever for, and every single time these discussions come up on HN, the overwhelming consensus is that people hate ads but are simply not willing to support content providers. So if I can figure out how to get enough traffic to get ad money rolling in, but can't figure out some other effective monetization scheme, I will go with that and not lose any sleep. Because I have been told for years that people value what I do, but, no, they don't want to pay me. And I am sick of that.
- imron 9y ago
  > So, blockchain advertising Not blockchain advertising at all. Rather I nominate how much I want to spend each month and the browser keeps track of what sites I visit and pays them proportionally to the amount I visit or optionally how I feel like rewarding them. I feel this is a significantly better model than advertising.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    You can do that now. Go pay for subscriptions to established publications, like The New York Times, and be a Patreon supporter of independent small shops, like me and my web projects. But you probably won't, because every single time someone says they would support content if (insert some condition) they really mean "I just like bitching about the status quo like everyone else, but I have no plans to actually open my wallet. And if this new fangled thing actually gets off the ground, I won't support it either and will have some new excuse."* The people actually willing to vote with their wallet do that in the here and now. They don't just make empty promises to do so in some imaginary future that sounds highly unlikely to ever become reality. * This is a general principle. When people claim they would like to support anything at all if only... Most of the time, that basically means "I am lying as I have zero plans to put my money where my mouth is."
    - blub 9y ago
      Everyone pays for what they value. To me that's e-mail a magazine, music, movies and sometimes apps. My list probably won't include any blogs, SaaS or most news sites. I don't see any contradiction, if those content creators can't get someone to pay for their content they will have go either give it away for free or stop producing. Option 1 is what I'm doing.
    - mikro2nd 9y ago
      The trouble with this idea is that I don't WANT a subscription to (say) The NY Times. Perhaps two or three times a month there's an article there that I'd sort-of like to read. That does not justify the $5/month subscription they'd like (or however much it is). And if they put a stumbling block in my path (say, maybe, a paywall or some such) then I'll forego the article. Chances are I'll find it quite easily somewhere else anyway, since mostly they're just regurgitating press releases and wire feeds. There's a mismatch between the value they ask and the value they offer. It's a deep and wide gulf and results from wildly mismatched wants, needs and assumptions.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        I believe I have seen some publications that will take one time donations. I certainly do on my sites. Again, it isn't exactly raking me rich, so to speak. So I sincerely think this is primarily an excuse.
        mikro2nd 9y ago
        I've seen a few that do offer a single-article fee, and that /might/ work -- except that the ones I've seen usually want a dollar or two which in my world is a disproportionate ask for the value offered -- and I'm not even sure that the value I end up receiving will match the value offered/promised until after the fact. The risk/reward ratio is just all wrong. (I don't mean to imply that this is the case for your work.) I do agree that it's frequently used as an excuse, though.
    - imron 9y ago
      > You can do that now You really can't. There are no browsers I know of (besides brave) that make automated payments to content creators based on how much I visit their site. Not to mention I don't want a dozen different subscriptions to a dozen different services. And I don't want a subscription to the nytimes the washington post or the wsj, because I barely read those sites (I'm not from the US so much of their content is not that relevant to me) but I might be happy to pay $0.10 for article once in a blue moon that I do find interesting on those sites - but there's no way to do that. I do put my money where my mouth is and I do support people I think make valuable content, but current systems are not scalable to all the content I currently read on the web. Things like what Brave is doing solve that problem.
- blub 9y ago
  It could be that your blog content is of high quality, interesting and yet is worth no money at all. Some things just can't be "monetized". I can't think of any blog that I would pay to read... I pay for books.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    So, another convenient justification for not supporting internet content while absolutely consuming it regularly. How novel. /s
    - blub 9y ago
      Well, you asked and I've answered. Like I said in another reply, I pay for what I value, but there is no guarantee that what I value includes a specific blog or website. Yes, maybe I'll read it and certainly I will block ads and tracking, because I don't like spyware nor malware. And if the content creator decides to block me or disappears I will read something else. Maybe if they had an easy way for me to pay them per article I would do it, but there is currently no such easy way that I know of. If my browser allowed me to pay websites somehow it would be ideal (and also a security nightmare). It may be harsh, but that's how it is. When I publish stuff I just give it away, I know I am somewhat privileged to be able to do this, however I see it as giving back to society in a small way.
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        Maybe if they had an easy way for me to pay them per article I would do it, but there is currently no such easy way that I know of. That's what I keep hearing over and over. And that's why I created a PayPal tip jar and wrote up instructions for other people to follow. Most people have PayPal and you can leave as little as a dollar. It hasn't magically transformed my income and no one seems interested in adopting it. Everyone talks about wanting micro payments of less than a dollar and something that is less hassle than paying a tip via PayPal. I am at a point where I genuinely believe this is just an excuse and, no, they absolutely don't want to support it. The HN crowd in particular tends to make good money. They could afford to kick in a few bucks. My impression from web traffic is they use ad blockers at a very high percentage and their position is always that writers can write for free, simply to express themselves. This is a form of classism. Developers generally have comfortable incomes. If they blog, it is to express themselves and possibly enhance their professional life and make them more employable. I consistently hear that writers just basically should do it for free. That is the very definition of slave labor. This same crowd has nothing but terrible things to say about content mills, one of the few ways a writer can get paid for their writing consistently.
- book_mentioned 9y ago
  If you need to make money, work backwards from "monetize" rather than starting from "content I think is meaningful".
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    I am not ready to sell my soul for money. I would vastly prefer to be a sex worker instead of putting out shite because it pays. That is the crux of a lot of social problems we have currently. I'm not ready to cave and become a sex worker either. But I would consider that to be 10 million times more respectable than shilling bs info because that pays.
    - book_mentioned 9y ago
      > sell my soul for money A few alternative phrases: having a job, paying the bills, making ends meet, etc. Few choose to be "really sick of being poor" while progressing towards their goals; success to you!
      - DoreenMichele 9y ago
        I am medically handicapped. Writing online is something I can consistently do without ending up in the ER. My condition is currently well controlled cheaply with diet and lifestyle. It is supposed to cost upwards of $100k annually for medical care and that would also have me facing higher living expenses. Getting healthier has dropped my food bill alone by more than a thousand dollars a month. And this is not really a discussion about me. I happen to be impacted by it and willing to speak to firsthand experience as a content producer. This discussion is about advertising and how that supports the free internet everyone expects while everyone then complains loudly about how advertising is the work of the devil. Blaming me for failing to find a solution here when monetization of content is in widespread crisis is a convenient means to sidestep the actual issue.
        book_mentioned 9y ago
        As a content producer, are you willing to join others creating something people demonstrate paying for directly [without advertising middlemen] or not? You have tunnel vision on the other end, looking for people to pay for what you are motivated to create [and begrudgingly accepting advertising middlemen finding someone]. As I said: success to you! Edit: In case it's not clear, my recommendation is to gain experience on something smaller/easier. Take the skill that you can use (or learn another one), find others using that skill to make money directly, and copy them step-by-step until it works for you. "Fail fast" doesn't mean give up on your dreams; use the experience gained for the harder sell. Insisting the only choice is between meaningful content and soul selling is a false dichotomy. Lifestyle-funding, paying audiences must be carefully built/grown. (Ideally, this means completely disintermediating all third parties; in practice this means keeping a diverse group of them at a healthy distance as a necessary evil -- especially for initial exposure, aka advertising.) The whole point of this discussion is that allowing anyone in-between the content creator and their audience inevitably breaks down the relationship as the middlemen prioritize what makes them the most money. [Edited a bunch to make it clear this is entirely on-topic; take care. At the absolute least: collect email addresses for a newsletter.]
RachelF 9y ago
The problem is that it is very hard to compete with "free". Users are now used to free services, getting them to pay will prove hard, especially if there is a free alternative, as many app makers and news sites have discovered.
- imron 9y ago
  The problem is not that it is hard to compete with free, but rather it's inconvenient to make small payments to people you think provide value. Not to mention no-one wants to sign up with their credit card info to a few dozen different sites just to do that. An automated system built in to the browser that bills a user determined amount monthly and apportions that to sites based on usage solves most of that. How much would you pay a month to have no advertising and no invasive tracking on the web and support content that you like? I'd be happy to spend $5-10 dollars doing that - I'm already spending $60 a month just for Internet access in the first place. If enough people sign on to that, and enough creators can use that as a revenue model then it will provide a way to fund content without the need for advertising.
  - DoreenMichele 9y ago
    I have a PayPal tip jar. You can give as little as a dollar. It isn't exactly raking in the dough. Most people just do not want to pay. The lack of a convenient means to pay small sums is an excuse to justify that. If it weren't, I should have more income. If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400. But, no. Most people don't go "That totally enriched my life. I shall give a dollar for this info."
    - imron 9y ago
      I had a paypal donate button on a piece of software I created and gave away for free. Over 5 years, I could count on my hands the number of people who donated. If I had a dollar for every time it was downloaded I would have been making a comfortable developer salary over that time, but hardly anyone donated despite the value it brought them. Then I changed it from a donate button next to the download button to a 'pay what you want' button (including $0) that you have to click before downloading. It was the exact same link to PayPal, but I made more in the first month of having that up than I did in the preceding 5 years. It's all about friction. A dollar or not, a PayPal payment is high friction. > If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400. You don't realise it, but you're essentially advocating for brave's payment system right there Imagine every visitor to your site paid you a small amount based on how much they visited, and it was all automated and frictionless so that the user didn't have to click anything - they'd just visit read an article and you'd just get paid. That's what brave is trying to build. If you're getting 40k views for your articles, check out their docs for publishers: https://brave.com/publishers/ https://brave.com/publishers/

I'd just rather be done with advertising on the web completely. Bring on Brave's Basic Attention Token.

by imron 9y ago

I'd just rather be done with advertising on the web completely. Bring on Brave's Basic Attention Token.

So, blockchain advertising? This is a fix? I'm a blogger. Everyone bitches about ads, but removing ads did not cause an uptick in tips. I later added Patreon. Ads are the magic that allow services to be given away for free to people who have zero willingness to pay for said services. The bills need to be paid somehow. Working for free doesn't keep people fed. I am still trying to figure out how to provide quality content that I think is meaningful and also monetize it. I would prefer to remove ads from my sites. But I am really sick of being poor, which no one has any sympathy whatsoever for, and every single time these discussions come up on HN, the overwhelming consensus is that people hate ads but are simply not willing to support content providers. So if I can figure out how to get enough traffic to get ad money rolling in, but can't figure out some other effective monetization scheme, I will go with that and not lose any sleep. Because I have been told for years that people value what I do, but, no, they don't want to pay me. And I am sick of that.

imron 9y ago
> So, blockchain advertising Not blockchain advertising at all. Rather I nominate how much I want to spend each month and the browser keeps track of what sites I visit and pays them proportionally to the amount I visit or optionally how I feel like rewarding them. I feel this is a significantly better model than advertising.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  You can do that now. Go pay for subscriptions to established publications, like The New York Times, and be a Patreon supporter of independent small shops, like me and my web projects. But you probably won't, because every single time someone says they would support content if (insert some condition) they really mean "I just like bitching about the status quo like everyone else, but I have no plans to actually open my wallet. And if this new fangled thing actually gets off the ground, I won't support it either and will have some new excuse."* The people actually willing to vote with their wallet do that in the here and now. They don't just make empty promises to do so in some imaginary future that sounds highly unlikely to ever become reality. * This is a general principle. When people claim they would like to support anything at all if only... Most of the time, that basically means "I am lying as I have zero plans to put my money where my mouth is."
  - blub 9y ago
    Everyone pays for what they value. To me that's e-mail a magazine, music, movies and sometimes apps. My list probably won't include any blogs, SaaS or most news sites. I don't see any contradiction, if those content creators can't get someone to pay for their content they will have go either give it away for free or stop producing. Option 1 is what I'm doing.
  - mikro2nd 9y ago
    The trouble with this idea is that I don't WANT a subscription to (say) The NY Times. Perhaps two or three times a month there's an article there that I'd sort-of like to read. That does not justify the $5/month subscription they'd like (or however much it is). And if they put a stumbling block in my path (say, maybe, a paywall or some such) then I'll forego the article. Chances are I'll find it quite easily somewhere else anyway, since mostly they're just regurgitating press releases and wire feeds. There's a mismatch between the value they ask and the value they offer. It's a deep and wide gulf and results from wildly mismatched wants, needs and assumptions.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      I believe I have seen some publications that will take one time donations. I certainly do on my sites. Again, it isn't exactly raking me rich, so to speak. So I sincerely think this is primarily an excuse.
      - mikro2nd 9y ago
        I've seen a few that do offer a single-article fee, and that /might/ work -- except that the ones I've seen usually want a dollar or two which in my world is a disproportionate ask for the value offered -- and I'm not even sure that the value I end up receiving will match the value offered/promised until after the fact. The risk/reward ratio is just all wrong. (I don't mean to imply that this is the case for your work.) I do agree that it's frequently used as an excuse, though.
  - imron 9y ago
    > You can do that now You really can't. There are no browsers I know of (besides brave) that make automated payments to content creators based on how much I visit their site. Not to mention I don't want a dozen different subscriptions to a dozen different services. And I don't want a subscription to the nytimes the washington post or the wsj, because I barely read those sites (I'm not from the US so much of their content is not that relevant to me) but I might be happy to pay $0.10 for article once in a blue moon that I do find interesting on those sites - but there's no way to do that. I do put my money where my mouth is and I do support people I think make valuable content, but current systems are not scalable to all the content I currently read on the web. Things like what Brave is doing solve that problem.
blub 9y ago
It could be that your blog content is of high quality, interesting and yet is worth no money at all. Some things just can't be "monetized". I can't think of any blog that I would pay to read... I pay for books.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  So, another convenient justification for not supporting internet content while absolutely consuming it regularly. How novel. /s
  - blub 9y ago
    Well, you asked and I've answered. Like I said in another reply, I pay for what I value, but there is no guarantee that what I value includes a specific blog or website. Yes, maybe I'll read it and certainly I will block ads and tracking, because I don't like spyware nor malware. And if the content creator decides to block me or disappears I will read something else. Maybe if they had an easy way for me to pay them per article I would do it, but there is currently no such easy way that I know of. If my browser allowed me to pay websites somehow it would be ideal (and also a security nightmare). It may be harsh, but that's how it is. When I publish stuff I just give it away, I know I am somewhat privileged to be able to do this, however I see it as giving back to society in a small way.
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      Maybe if they had an easy way for me to pay them per article I would do it, but there is currently no such easy way that I know of. That's what I keep hearing over and over. And that's why I created a PayPal tip jar and wrote up instructions for other people to follow. Most people have PayPal and you can leave as little as a dollar. It hasn't magically transformed my income and no one seems interested in adopting it. Everyone talks about wanting micro payments of less than a dollar and something that is less hassle than paying a tip via PayPal. I am at a point where I genuinely believe this is just an excuse and, no, they absolutely don't want to support it. The HN crowd in particular tends to make good money. They could afford to kick in a few bucks. My impression from web traffic is they use ad blockers at a very high percentage and their position is always that writers can write for free, simply to express themselves. This is a form of classism. Developers generally have comfortable incomes. If they blog, it is to express themselves and possibly enhance their professional life and make them more employable. I consistently hear that writers just basically should do it for free. That is the very definition of slave labor. This same crowd has nothing but terrible things to say about content mills, one of the few ways a writer can get paid for their writing consistently.
book_mentioned 9y ago
If you need to make money, work backwards from "monetize" rather than starting from "content I think is meaningful".
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I am not ready to sell my soul for money. I would vastly prefer to be a sex worker instead of putting out shite because it pays. That is the crux of a lot of social problems we have currently. I'm not ready to cave and become a sex worker either. But I would consider that to be 10 million times more respectable than shilling bs info because that pays.
  - book_mentioned 9y ago
    > sell my soul for money A few alternative phrases: having a job, paying the bills, making ends meet, etc. Few choose to be "really sick of being poor" while progressing towards their goals; success to you!
    - DoreenMichele 9y ago
      I am medically handicapped. Writing online is something I can consistently do without ending up in the ER. My condition is currently well controlled cheaply with diet and lifestyle. It is supposed to cost upwards of $100k annually for medical care and that would also have me facing higher living expenses. Getting healthier has dropped my food bill alone by more than a thousand dollars a month. And this is not really a discussion about me. I happen to be impacted by it and willing to speak to firsthand experience as a content producer. This discussion is about advertising and how that supports the free internet everyone expects while everyone then complains loudly about how advertising is the work of the devil. Blaming me for failing to find a solution here when monetization of content is in widespread crisis is a convenient means to sidestep the actual issue.
      - book_mentioned 9y ago
        As a content producer, are you willing to join others creating something people demonstrate paying for directly [without advertising middlemen] or not? You have tunnel vision on the other end, looking for people to pay for what you are motivated to create [and begrudgingly accepting advertising middlemen finding someone]. As I said: success to you! Edit: In case it's not clear, my recommendation is to gain experience on something smaller/easier. Take the skill that you can use (or learn another one), find others using that skill to make money directly, and copy them step-by-step until it works for you. "Fail fast" doesn't mean give up on your dreams; use the experience gained for the harder sell. Insisting the only choice is between meaningful content and soul selling is a false dichotomy. Lifestyle-funding, paying audiences must be carefully built/grown. (Ideally, this means completely disintermediating all third parties; in practice this means keeping a diverse group of them at a healthy distance as a necessary evil -- especially for initial exposure, aka advertising.) The whole point of this discussion is that allowing anyone in-between the content creator and their audience inevitably breaks down the relationship as the middlemen prioritize what makes them the most money. [Edited a bunch to make it clear this is entirely on-topic; take care. At the absolute least: collect email addresses for a newsletter.]

RachelF 9y ago

The problem is that it is very hard to compete with "free". Users are now used to free services, getting them to pay will prove hard, especially if there is a free alternative, as many app makers and news sites have discovered.

imron 9y ago
The problem is not that it is hard to compete with free, but rather it's inconvenient to make small payments to people you think provide value. Not to mention no-one wants to sign up with their credit card info to a few dozen different sites just to do that. An automated system built in to the browser that bills a user determined amount monthly and apportions that to sites based on usage solves most of that. How much would you pay a month to have no advertising and no invasive tracking on the web and support content that you like? I'd be happy to spend $5-10 dollars doing that - I'm already spending $60 a month just for Internet access in the first place. If enough people sign on to that, and enough creators can use that as a revenue model then it will provide a way to fund content without the need for advertising.
- DoreenMichele 9y ago
  I have a PayPal tip jar. You can give as little as a dollar. It isn't exactly raking in the dough. Most people just do not want to pay. The lack of a convenient means to pay small sums is an excuse to justify that. If it weren't, I should have more income. If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400. But, no. Most people don't go "That totally enriched my life. I shall give a dollar for this info."
  - imron 9y ago
    I had a paypal donate button on a piece of software I created and gave away for free. Over 5 years, I could count on my hands the number of people who donated. If I had a dollar for every time it was downloaded I would have been making a comfortable developer salary over that time, but hardly anyone donated despite the value it brought them. Then I changed it from a donate button next to the download button to a 'pay what you want' button (including $0) that you have to click before downloading. It was the exact same link to PayPal, but I made more in the first month of having that up than I did in the preceding 5 years. It's all about friction. A dollar or not, a PayPal payment is high friction. > If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400. You don't realise it, but you're essentially advocating for brave's payment system right there Imagine every visitor to your site paid you a small amount based on how much they visited, and it was all automated and frictionless so that the user didn't have to click anything - they'd just visit read an article and you'd just get paid. That's what brave is trying to build. If you're getting 40k views for your articles, check out their docs for publishers: https://brave.com/publishers/ https://brave.com/publishers/