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You can get sponsors and remain trustworthy, you just need to disclose sponsorships, and curate the people who you actually take money from. This can be a probl

You can get sponsors and remain trustworthy, you just need to disclose sponsorships, and curate the people who you actually take money from. This can be a problem because genuinely good product sponsorships are probably not the first ones you get offered as a content creator, but I've seen plenty of examples of this working and it pays more than ad revenue for most people.

DoreenMichele 8y ago
I heard once of a small business that was in a remote and scenic location. It added a live webcam to their website. It showed the weather for their scenic locale. It eventually ended up with a crazy high amount of regular traffic. They eventually sold ads for big money to a couple of big name companies. IIRC, Disney was one of them. People were visiting the site for the live view from the webcam. The value they found in checking the live view from the webcam was not inherently harmed by having Disney ads on the site. (Those ads probably paid the business owners more than they made all year at their mom-and-pop shop in the middle of nowhere.) There's also Everyday Carry. They interview people and do photos of the things they carry every day, then have links to where you can buy whatever these people carry -- their brand of cell phone or pen or whatever. I think it's brilliant. I also know of content producers who make t-shirts and mugs and the like with their content on it. The ones that are successful tend to be entertainers doing something humorous. Effin' Birds and Questionable Content both do some of this. Some problem spaces are easier to monetize than others. The above examples of success in no way changes anything I said in my previous comment. Maybe I shall someday figure out how to be funny and make a mint selling t-shirts with my witticisms on them. But, so far, that doesn't seem to be my schtick.

DoreenMichele 8y ago

I heard once of a small business that was in a remote and scenic location. It added a live webcam to their website. It showed the weather for their scenic locale. It eventually ended up with a crazy high amount of regular traffic. They eventually sold ads for big money to a couple of big name companies. IIRC, Disney was one of them. People were visiting the site for the live view from the webcam. The value they found in checking the live view from the webcam was not inherently harmed by having Disney ads on the site. (Those ads probably paid the business owners more than they made all year at their mom-and-pop shop in the middle of nowhere.) There's also Everyday Carry. They interview people and do photos of the things they carry every day, then have links to where you can buy whatever these people carry -- their brand of cell phone or pen or whatever. I think it's brilliant. I also know of content producers who make t-shirts and mugs and the like with their content on it. The ones that are successful tend to be entertainers doing something humorous. Effin' Birds and Questionable Content both do some of this. Some problem spaces are easier to monetize than others. The above examples of success in no way changes anything I said in my previous comment. Maybe I shall someday figure out how to be funny and make a mint selling t-shirts with my witticisms on them. But, so far, that doesn't seem to be my schtick.