5 ms·

I disagree, and your comment is a case in point. An incredibly large portion of the valuable content on the internet is written by people who expect no payoff i

by Xk 16y ago

I disagree, and your comment is a case in point. An incredibly large portion of the valuable content on the internet is written by people who expect no payoff in the traditional sense of the word. You don't get anything money by writing that comment, yet you write it none the less. This is becoming more and more the case.

_delirium 16y ago
Indeed, if anything I notice a slight negative correlation. The most unabashedly "capitalist" content providers, in the sense of doing it mainly for the money, are the tabloidish blogs: gawker, valleywag, gizmodo, etc. They produce pretty mediocre content (and we don't even have to discuss the content farms). The top content imo comes mostly from folks not being paid, at least not being paid directly for the content: university professors, essayists like Paul Graham, tech bloggers like Yosef K, and so on, who write about stuff that interests them, and publish it online. Some of them do some low-level monetization of their content via Amazon links and a few ads, but many don't even do that. It's not a pure anti-correlation, because there is good commercial stuff and crappy free stuff, but I certainly don't see a strong positive correlation either.
- Paulomus 16y ago
  Yes, Wikipedia would be another example. It is one of the most useful destinations on the web, but does not charge anything. So too are web-comics, just about all of which are free to view, while the creators make their money elsewhere (through donations, t-shirt/book sales etc.). In these kind of things it is the voluntary readership/participation that makes the site/blog/comic a success. The existance of a community of users is a valuable resource that should not be alienated lightly.
- loewenskind 16y ago
  >essayists like Paul Graham pg doesn't get paid directly from the essays on his site (afaik), but he does gain reputation and credibility. How many more books did he sell because of his essays (e.g. I bought On Lisp after reading "beating the averages")? The market has been more sophisticated than "give me X and I'll give you money" for a very long time.
  - _delirium 16y ago
    Yeah, that's one reason I think selling content directly for money has a troubled future--- there are too many people who gain indirect benefits from giving away high-quality content for free. Add to that the people who do it just because they like to have people read their stuff, and there's a large free-content market competing with any attempt to charge.
    - robryan 16y ago
      Sure, the longer more in depth work most of the time must be support in a more financial way, contrast the number of people happy to give away essays of a few pages length for indirect or no benefit to those prepared to spend a year or more writing a well researched book for the same reasons.

by Xk 16y ago

_delirium 16y ago

Indeed, if anything I notice a slight negative correlation. The most unabashedly "capitalist" content providers, in the sense of doing it mainly for the money, are the tabloidish blogs: gawker, valleywag, gizmodo, etc. They produce pretty mediocre content (and we don't even have to discuss the content farms). The top content imo comes mostly from folks not being paid, at least not being paid directly for the content: university professors, essayists like Paul Graham, tech bloggers like Yosef K, and so on, who write about stuff that interests them, and publish it online. Some of them do some low-level monetization of their content via Amazon links and a few ads, but many don't even do that. It's not a pure anti-correlation, because there is good commercial stuff and crappy free stuff, but I certainly don't see a strong positive correlation either.

Paulomus 16y ago
Yes, Wikipedia would be another example. It is one of the most useful destinations on the web, but does not charge anything. So too are web-comics, just about all of which are free to view, while the creators make their money elsewhere (through donations, t-shirt/book sales etc.). In these kind of things it is the voluntary readership/participation that makes the site/blog/comic a success. The existance of a community of users is a valuable resource that should not be alienated lightly.
loewenskind 16y ago
>essayists like Paul Graham pg doesn't get paid directly from the essays on his site (afaik), but he does gain reputation and credibility. How many more books did he sell because of his essays (e.g. I bought On Lisp after reading "beating the averages")? The market has been more sophisticated than "give me X and I'll give you money" for a very long time.
- _delirium 16y ago
  Yeah, that's one reason I think selling content directly for money has a troubled future--- there are too many people who gain indirect benefits from giving away high-quality content for free. Add to that the people who do it just because they like to have people read their stuff, and there's a large free-content market competing with any attempt to charge.
  - robryan 16y ago
    Sure, the longer more in depth work most of the time must be support in a more financial way, contrast the number of people happy to give away essays of a few pages length for indirect or no benefit to those prepared to spend a year or more writing a well researched book for the same reasons.