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Well let me respond, since maybe I'm one of those guys. You've fundamentally misunderstood what I want. If a "writer" wrote it as part of their job, I don't wa

by qup 3y ago

Well let me respond, since maybe I'm one of those guys. You've fundamentally misunderstood what I want. If a "writer" wrote it as part of their job, I don't want to read it. I mean, I might, but that's not what I would be "whining" about here. I've kept blogs most of my life. I'm after similar content to what I would post. I don't care to read whatever you want to get paid to write. No offense, I'm sure it's great and worth all the money. The quality experience is enjoying other people's gardens, and the point of having the garden is to share it with other people, not to have a ticket booth or a billboard. At least, that's the case at my blog. Which I've never shared here, and nobody else ever has either. Which I find totally fine.

DoreenMichele 3y ago
You seem to be assuming some things different from my reality. I make very little money from blogging. I took ads off years ago. It's not some kind of paid gig shilling for some product or whatever. I have a Patreon that makes too little and I take tips. I try to write what I think is meaningful. My writing has repeatedly made the front page of HN, often without making a dime. I've stopped posting it here. I'm tired of feeling kicked in the teeth for "self promoting". Journalism is in trouble. This undermines political freedom. Etc. And yet people just expect high traffic to pay the bills, which it can if your monetization strategy is ads, but the HN crowd is fond of ad blockers and vocally critical of ads. Anyway, I don't care to argue it. You asked a question. I replies. This conversation is most likely a waste of time. Adieu.
- giantrobot 3y ago
  > And yet people just expect high traffic to pay the bills, which it can if your monetization strategy is ads, but the HN crowd is fond of ad blockers and vocally critical of ads. For me the problem is not ads but the inevitable AdTech pushed under the guise of "ads". Too many sites want me to enable what they call ads but are really incredibly invasive spying systems. Many are compromised and actually deliver malware. The whole situation is made worse by the "ads" serving up a bunch of shit I didn't ask for. The text content of some article is a fraction of the size of the tracking scripts and auto-playing video. Everyone could save a lot on costs by not serving me a multi-megabyte video next to a 30kB blog post.
  - DoreenMichele 3y ago
    I took ads off my websites years ago. I have no problem with the HN crowd being anti ad. I'm just saying we have the means to pay content creators right now and the reality is people mostly expect free content and implicitly assume that if you have sufficient traffic, you are making money and the reality is that assumption de facto has baked in an ad-based monetization strategy. Micropayments as people would like to imagine them don't yet exist. Good writing takes time. You want more of it, you should find a way to make it pay and, no, implicitly assuming an ad-based revenue model where you don't have to take a crowbar to your wallet and put it open and explicitly blocking ads and wanting nothing to do with them adds up to "Hello? Exactly how do you expect creative to make rent?"
    - inconceivable 3y ago
      people are making tons of money on substack. so why not you?
carlosjobim 3y ago
> I don't care to read whatever you want to get paid to write. Writers don't write to get paid, but they need to get paid to be able to continue to write. When writing seriously for high quality content, you need to treat it like a full time job, with massive focus. So if they can't get paid, then the only people with a voice are those with a comfortable income from somewhere else and a lot of time on their hands. And that's a very small subset of the population. It's like enjoying food you get for free at a friend's house and returning the favor, but being insulted at the idea of paying in a restaurant.

by qup 3y ago

DoreenMichele 3y ago

You seem to be assuming some things different from my reality. I make very little money from blogging. I took ads off years ago. It's not some kind of paid gig shilling for some product or whatever. I have a Patreon that makes too little and I take tips. I try to write what I think is meaningful. My writing has repeatedly made the front page of HN, often without making a dime. I've stopped posting it here. I'm tired of feeling kicked in the teeth for "self promoting". Journalism is in trouble. This undermines political freedom. Etc. And yet people just expect high traffic to pay the bills, which it can if your monetization strategy is ads, but the HN crowd is fond of ad blockers and vocally critical of ads. Anyway, I don't care to argue it. You asked a question. I replies. This conversation is most likely a waste of time. Adieu.

giantrobot 3y ago
> And yet people just expect high traffic to pay the bills, which it can if your monetization strategy is ads, but the HN crowd is fond of ad blockers and vocally critical of ads. For me the problem is not ads but the inevitable AdTech pushed under the guise of "ads". Too many sites want me to enable what they call ads but are really incredibly invasive spying systems. Many are compromised and actually deliver malware. The whole situation is made worse by the "ads" serving up a bunch of shit I didn't ask for. The text content of some article is a fraction of the size of the tracking scripts and auto-playing video. Everyone could save a lot on costs by not serving me a multi-megabyte video next to a 30kB blog post.
- DoreenMichele 3y ago
  I took ads off my websites years ago. I have no problem with the HN crowd being anti ad. I'm just saying we have the means to pay content creators right now and the reality is people mostly expect free content and implicitly assume that if you have sufficient traffic, you are making money and the reality is that assumption de facto has baked in an ad-based monetization strategy. Micropayments as people would like to imagine them don't yet exist. Good writing takes time. You want more of it, you should find a way to make it pay and, no, implicitly assuming an ad-based revenue model where you don't have to take a crowbar to your wallet and put it open and explicitly blocking ads and wanting nothing to do with them adds up to "Hello? Exactly how do you expect creative to make rent?"
  - inconceivable 3y ago
    people are making tons of money on substack. so why not you?

carlosjobim 3y ago

> I don't care to read whatever you want to get paid to write. Writers don't write to get paid, but they need to get paid to be able to continue to write. When writing seriously for high quality content, you need to treat it like a full time job, with massive focus. So if they can't get paid, then the only people with a voice are those with a comfortable income from somewhere else and a lot of time on their hands. And that's a very small subset of the population. It's like enjoying food you get for free at a friend's house and returning the favor, but being insulted at the idea of paying in a restaurant.