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The fact that it took Techdirt, A site which supposedly is read by all leading Big Tech CEOs this long to do away with Google Ads shows how helpless nascent ind
by Abishek_Muthian 5y ago
The fact that it took Techdirt, A site which supposedly is read by all leading Big Tech CEOs this long to do away with Google Ads shows how helpless nascent independent writers who have a fraction of audience of that of techdirt are when it comes to monetization without Ads.
I'm myself in that category, I know that my blog has enough visitors to break even at least the running cost with Ads but I could not pull myself to do it when I personally hate Ads, Feel its disrespectful to attention and go all the way to ensure I don't see one(Pi-Hole, UBlock etc.).
My content are distributed randomly across several interests and I don't have regular schedule due to health reasons so a patreon wouldn't work. Paypal donations are blocked for my country. So the best bet is 'Buy Me a Coffee' but then I have to pay both Stripe + BMaC commissions, I have to register a business to be able to get International payments on Stripe anyways.
So a direct stripe payment or similar PG is the only option to monetize open content for this scenario and since tax id is involved due to Intl. payments it's not a donation.
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI've never minded reasonable ads, but I don't want tracker ads and cookies. I know people who produce good content deserve at least a chance at making a buck, I just don't want to sacrifice my privacy for it though. So serve up ads related to the article content or generic random ads I suppose.
- Abishek_Muthian 5y agoI agree, But advertising agencies which offer advertisements without tracking are negligible because their competition produces more conversion so obviously advertisers flock to them. Services like ethical ads are available only to select large open-source projects as the advertisers target niche audience. Affiliate links when the content isn't exactly a review of the said product/book (to avoid conflict of interest) do work in this context to some extent. But the current referral system is a mess with each product/service tying up with different middlemen or having their own system, arbitrary approval, payment issues, publishers gaming the system etc. I have started to track the need-gap for 'Single referral system for all services' on my problem validation platform[1]. [1] https://needgap.com/problems/274-single-referral-system-for-all-services-marketing-monetization https://needgap.com/problems/274-single-referral-system-for-...
- stjohnswarts 5y agoI agree, I think this is why tracking/cookies that do so should be illegal. Then at least the big guys like google will stop doing it. You'll never stop all of it though.