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The evils of ads and the brokenness of pay walls are a lot more nuanced than that. Ads have created an ecosystem where no one is willing to pay for media becau

The evils of ads and the brokenness of pay walls are a lot more nuanced than that. Ads have created an ecosystem where no one is willing to pay for media because we have gotten it free in exchange for our privacy. This hurts you, small publications, large publications. No one wants to pay for shit and we are tracked everywhere we go. Paywalls are broken because of the credit card system. Publishers can not charge a reasonable rate for an article. Due to minimums, our financial system really only makes sense to have subscriptions. I do not want to pay $5 per month recurring. I want to pay 25 cents per article. That is not possible though. Pop up a pay wall for 25 cents and I will pay it. Good luck having that make sense with Stripe fees though. I try to monetize my work with Patreon as well. It is difficult work. Fuck ads though. That's not the world I want. I have other income though.

DoreenMichele 6y ago
The picture is certainly a lot more complicated than I have covered here. I get tired of repeating the same points, but it boils down this: 1. The current status quo is that there are no acceptable ways for me to monetize my writing: People hate ads and use ad blockers, people hate Patreon, people hate tips, people hate it if you are using your writing to sell other products (aka "content marketing") etc ad nauseum. There is no means to monetize writing that doesn't get hated on, so people de facto expect writers to work for free. 2. I'm tired of trying to analyze it to death and prove my point. I'm more focused on "Where do we go from here?" and less focused on "How did we get here and why is this so messed up?" If you hate it, help me find a path forward and forge a new model we can spread. I increasingly try to focus on "If you hate the status quo, do something about it and vote with your wallet instead of bitching on the internet and then acting like this is inevitable and we can't change it."

DoreenMichele 6y ago

The picture is certainly a lot more complicated than I have covered here. I get tired of repeating the same points, but it boils down this: 1. The current status quo is that there are no acceptable ways for me to monetize my writing: People hate ads and use ad blockers, people hate Patreon, people hate tips, people hate it if you are using your writing to sell other products (aka "content marketing") etc ad nauseum. There is no means to monetize writing that doesn't get hated on, so people de facto expect writers to work for free. 2. I'm tired of trying to analyze it to death and prove my point. I'm more focused on "Where do we go from here?" and less focused on "How did we get here and why is this so messed up?" If you hate it, help me find a path forward and forge a new model we can spread. I increasingly try to focus on "If you hate the status quo, do something about it and vote with your wallet instead of bitching on the internet and then acting like this is inevitable and we can't change it."