Tackling the Internet’s Central Villain: The Advertising Business
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
How is it that so many people agree with me here, but then eagerly defend online advertisers' rights to manipulate them? They claim that so long as the ads are unobtrusive, then no problem - even though the ads still have the same goal in the end. These people want to be manipulated. How is any of this rationalized?
My favorite is, "Why do you hate the Internet?!?" Since many things they like are paid through via ads, they see an objection to that as an objection to, e.g., news. I think this argument is dumb in a lot of ways, but the biggest for me is that nobody would have figured another way to pay for anything.
The next is, "Why do you hate freedom (of speech)?!?" This is usually phrased in a pseudo-first-amendment way, but as far as I can tell the real claim is some sort of might-makes-right, the-ends-justify-the-means, the-rich-can-do-as-they-please nonsense. All sorts of speech is actually illegal. E.g., fraud, solicitation of murder, conspiracy to commit murder, unlicensed practice of medicine, etc, etc. Capitalism is swell and all, but turning a profit is not a license to be a dick.
Another big one is along the lines of the Upton Sinclair quote: "It is difficult to get a man to understand something when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!" People who work in ads or for ad-supported companies can't see themselves as doing anything wrong, ergo manipulating people for money can't be wrong.
And then there's the one I think of as "suffer, Muggles". The logic goes, "I am smart and don't notice my being being manipulated by ads, ergo all the people who are manipulated by ads are dumb and deserve what they get." It's the same shick that you see whenever people get scammed. This ignores that ads and scams are both heavily targeted; that something is obvious just means they were going for another victim.
It all makes me crazy, though. We spend something like a half-trillion dollars annually on mass manipulation. The old justification was that people needed to be informed. That made little sense; the novel informational content of a Coke commercial is approximately zero. But now with the Internet, word of mouth is frictionless, reviews are free, and search is magic. Given that ads also obfuscate and confuse, I suspect their net information content is now negative. Might as well spend that half-trillion dollars on something that matters.
Questions of good vs. bad manipulation usually center around regret. When your future self looks back at your present, manipulated self, do they regret the interaction? For the door-to-door salesman, the answer is usually yes: best case you're like "I want those 5 minutes of my life back", worst case you're like "I bought something I totally didn't need". For the charitable donation, usually your future self continues to believe "I did a good deed", unless your values change significantly, and so you willingly participate in their manipulation. Advertising (particularly search advertising) is in that grey area where if you end up finding the product useful, the ad performed a vital service, while if you ended up buying something useless, you were manipulated.
In general it seems counterproductive to protect people since that can tend to make the protected people weaker. But advertising is as the parent says nothing but manipulation. It takes away choice from the users, and gives it to advertisers. It's used by businesses such as car dealers to buffer bad practices -- when word of mouth doesn't work, advertise a sale.
A market of free products seems to kill ecosystems like the app store, where so much low quality free stuff is available. But would a 50 cent limit be significantly better? If advertising were eliminated would the world be better or would it just adapt to some other equally ugly configuration. With users paying at least we have that choice & price information that currently isn't there (if the service is otherwise free).
Thanks to the magic of cognitive dissonance I can still hold the opinion that advertising has been an enormous net negative for the internet and the world.
They're either the Salesman, our the Salesman is selling their product.
But look at actual tech people's own actions: they overwhelmingly use ad blockers.
What's really interesting, but no more believable, is the mental gymnastics required to not admit the simple truth:
For most people, the most acceptable advertisement is an advertisement that isn't there.
Radio and TV were "passive" mediums where broadcasters were in control and audiences passively consumed what was offered. Ads were included. Web has traditionally been more interactive. Users had control of what to consume and when, through specific, focused (HTTP) requests.
No web user intentionally requests ads. Think about this.
The user requests a specific resource.
Then how is advertising being "included"?
Answer: Popular web browsers load resources (ads) automatically, by default. Requests for ads are made by the browser, not the user. Companies that sell ads write these browsers and try to dominate the "browser market". Other web browsers (that might avoid loading ads) are discouraged. Web developers take advantage of the popular browsers written by ad sales companies to manipulate the pages users request, filling them with ads.
Going back into the history of the www and browsers, the intent of auto-loading resources may have originally had nothing to do with advertising. But today, it has everything to do with advertising (and tracking).
On the other hand, users have revealed their preference again and again in favor of ad-supported free services (see relative unpopularity of Patreon, Youtube Red etc). Users benefit a lot from free search, emails, messaging, video communication, maps and other services. How many would be willing to pay for these services? Based on my industry experience, a very small slice of the global internet population (though I'd be very happy to be proven wrong).
Finally, I am hesitant to root for government intervention. While regulations are great in some cases (eg. EPA, CDC etc), I just fear regulations for internet companies would end up hurting small players and would entrench oligopolies of Google, Facebook et al (eg. German regulations about online news ended up benefiting Google News and hurting smaller players, or "right to be forgotten" in EU, while good in intentions, has just set up another barrier to entry for a new search engine).
In theory, once it’s discovered to be persuasive, then it’s no longer cheap, as advertisers start bidding up the limited inventory.
There are issues with online advertising that need to be addressed but let's not pretend it's some sort of supremely effective form of manipulation.
For content creators there is absolutely no incentive to be accurate and sell on performance if you are writing your own content (most content ads just don’t perform that well), and even worse so - the way you write content and the content you choose to write is heavily influenced by google keywords and algorithms, instead of usefulness. Even if you take the time to do quality content the algorithms flush you down as soon as automatically generated bad content looks more recent.
For ad networks the volume of fake clicks and redirects flushes any decency left - they make money when advertisers see this as a casino with variable rewards based on your luck or presumed skill more than a store where you buy results. Advertisers are left to swim in this and experiment while paying for their assumptions. They don’t know what actually works, overpay for fake clicks, and have a constant toll on their business because even if they perform better for customers, those who play the casino games still get the top placement.
Google and facebook and anyone who is upstream in the user attention game (Apple and Android for example)can collect rent on anyone who has a business in a competitive industry or has a consumer reach not viral enough to be used and remembered daily.
The system is not going to change on its own.
The change will come from a better system for consumers that doesn’t monetize attention and doesn’t charge per use and one is coming. Facebook and Google are too dependent on advertising and will not be able to switch fast enough to keep their investors. Their increasingly worsening experience will eventually be overthrown by a much better one for users.
I have been iterating and digging deep into alternatives. Ping me if you are working on this problem.
I believe any form of advertising where the recipient has not specifically chosen to view the ad should be considered a rights violation and banned. This would force advertisers to produce ads people wanted to watch. It would also put an end to billboards, TV commercials, banner ads and most kinds of inline ads. Basically everything that is currently foisted upon us against our will. This would be a radical change but it is the only change that could solve the problems we currently face with advertising today.
I'm a blogger. Everyone bitches about ads, but removing ads did not cause an uptick in tips. I later added Patreon.
Ads are the magic that allow services to be given away for free to people who have zero willingness to pay for said services. The bills need to be paid somehow. Working for free doesn't keep people fed.
I am still trying to figure out how to provide quality content that I think is meaningful and also monetize it. I would prefer to remove ads from my sites. But I am really sick of being poor, which no one has any sympathy whatsoever for, and every single time these discussions come up on HN, the overwhelming consensus is that people hate ads but are simply not willing to support content providers.
So if I can figure out how to get enough traffic to get ad money rolling in, but can't figure out some other effective monetization scheme, I will go with that and not lose any sleep. Because I have been told for years that people value what I do, but, no, they don't want to pay me. And I am sick of that.
I can't think of any blog that I would pay to read... I pay for books.
How novel.
/s
Like I said in another reply, I pay for what I value, but there is no guarantee that what I value includes a specific blog or website.
Yes, maybe I'll read it and certainly I will block ads and tracking, because I don't like spyware nor malware. And if the content creator decides to block me or disappears I will read something else. Maybe if they had an easy way for me to pay them per article I would do it, but there is currently no such easy way that I know of. If my browser allowed me to pay websites somehow it would be ideal (and also a security nightmare).
It may be harsh, but that's how it is. When I publish stuff I just give it away, I know I am somewhat privileged to be able to do this, however I see it as giving back to society in a small way.
That's what I keep hearing over and over. And that's why I created a PayPal tip jar and wrote up instructions for other people to follow. Most people have PayPal and you can leave as little as a dollar.
It hasn't magically transformed my income and no one seems interested in adopting it.
Everyone talks about wanting micro payments of less than a dollar and something that is less hassle than paying a tip via PayPal. I am at a point where I genuinely believe this is just an excuse and, no, they absolutely don't want to support it.
The HN crowd in particular tends to make good money. They could afford to kick in a few bucks. My impression from web traffic is they use ad blockers at a very high percentage and their position is always that writers can write for free, simply to express themselves.
This is a form of classism. Developers generally have comfortable incomes. If they blog, it is to express themselves and possibly enhance their professional life and make them more employable.
I consistently hear that writers just basically should do it for free. That is the very definition of slave labor. This same crowd has nothing but terrible things to say about content mills, one of the few ways a writer can get paid for their writing consistently.
Society should support everyone to live a dignified life, and have a decent income. It shouldn't leave them to fight for an income and make deals with the devil to get it.
Ads are paying the bills now. We don't like where that has taken us. But most people don't want to address the issue in the here and now of how else to cover the bills if not via ads.
Every single discussion I have seen of this issue boils down to:
1. People want ads to go away.
2. They still want content to be free.
3. Content producers need to eat? Oh, well, not my problem. Sucks to be you.
2. It doesn't matter much what people want, but what the new reality absent ads will be: there will be enough free content done by people who do it for the fun of it, as is the case now. Highest quality stuff will be available for pay, with some exceptions. Any other content will either disappear or be made free - the potential customers have decided it's not worthwhile enough to pay for it. I do not see any problem with the above, the human race doesn't suffer from a lack of digital content. It's a minor issue, that's on reason why people don't pay for it.
3. No one should have their living depend on creating stuff online, this is a major social failure. We, individual members of society pay our taxes so that everyone has some degree of social support; some of those taxes will be used to help out people in need until they get back on their feet and get a job.
Ad-supported content creator is not a job, it is an accidental revenue stream that will likely disappear.
UBI could be a solution, but that's not what I had in mind: affordable state-supported medical care, financial support for the unemployed, retraining and trainings paid by the unemployment office. This is reality right now in some European countries and it could be possible in the US.
This is not just small mom and pop shops and it is not just content creators. Acting like content creators need to get a real job completely overlooks how big the internet is, how many real jobs are involved in its ongoing existence and that a large portion of that is supported via ad revenue.
Facebook is supported with ad revenue. It's a large company. You may think it sucks, but it employs many coders, it isn't likely to go anywhere any time soon and it is ad supported.
If the googles, facebooks and other ad companies would disappear over night, the world will be fine.
Humanity is not obliged to support any particular company or business model. Those google and fb employees will likewise be fine, I hear there's always complaints in the US about a lack of qualified engineers...
Not blockchain advertising at all. Rather I nominate how much I want to spend each month and the browser keeps track of what sites I visit and pays them proportionally to the amount I visit or optionally how I feel like rewarding them.
I feel this is a significantly better model than advertising.
But you probably won't, because every single time someone says they would support content if (insert some condition) they really mean "I just like bitching about the status quo like everyone else, but I have no plans to actually open my wallet. And if this new fangled thing actually gets off the ground, I won't support it either and will have some new excuse."*
The people actually willing to vote with their wallet do that in the here and now. They don't just make empty promises to do so in some imaginary future that sounds highly unlikely to ever become reality.
* This is a general principle. When people claim they would like to support anything at all if only... Most of the time, that basically means "I am lying as I have zero plans to put my money where my mouth is."
Maybe it really is about convenience. After all, many of us pay dearly when ads are downloaded over mobile networks, and in many cases the footprint of the ads greatly exceeds the content itself. I'd be overjoyed if that money magically made its way to content producers like you instead.
So I put it back to you, where's my magic money teleporting button? Here are the requirements:
- Can't take more than 5 seconds of my time (1 second for a pre-set donation amount) - Doesn't reveal my identity to anyone - Tallies up for easy computation of charitable donations for my tax year
I created a PayPal tip jar. That doesn't keep you anonymous, and it won't tally it up for you. Besides, I am not a charity, so I don't think giving me money qualifies for a tax deduction.
It is the best I could figure out that somewhat closely fits the criteria I see over and over of 1. Accessible platform 2. Small payment amount 3. Low friction.
I briefly considered trying to set up a cryptocurrency donate button as a means to allow anonymous payments but that seems complicated and unlikely to actually work in terms of converting to actual cash in my pocket.
You really can't. There are no browsers I know of (besides brave) that make automated payments to content creators based on how much I visit their site.
Not to mention I don't want a dozen different subscriptions to a dozen different services.
And I don't want a subscription to the nytimes the washington post or the wsj, because I barely read those sites (I'm not from the US so much of their content is not that relevant to me) but I might be happy to pay $0.10 for article once in a blue moon that I do find interesting on those sites - but there's no way to do that.
I do put my money where my mouth is and I do support people I think make valuable content, but current systems are not scalable to all the content I currently read on the web. Things like what Brave is doing solve that problem.
I think Basic Income is less far fetched and I have been quite vocal about how crazy I think that is.
No I'm not. I already support content creators who create things that are valuable and that I enjoy. Unfortunately, current payment methods mean that this value has to cross a relatively high threshold before payment is feasible and so creators are often left with nothing.
And yes, $1 is a high threshold - especially for something like a blog post. There aren't many articles on the web that I'd pay $1 to read. There are however many articles on the web I'd pay $0.02 to read - but that option isn't available.
I'm not going to manually spend my time sending sites a dollar here and a dollar there. If however my browser can automate micropayments based on site usage and I can opt in for how much I'm prepared to pay per month in total, then that is something I'd pay for.
> It would require everyone to have the same browser.
No it wouldn't, it would just require all browsers to standardize on a given system. There is no technical reason other browsers couldn't implement automated payments using the Basic Attention Token (or something similar).
On the one hand, I am reluctant to tell you my reasons for my choices because it winds up being an opportunity for people to just make this about me and ignore the wider issue that is under discussion. It makes it all too easy for people to act like "it is just one dumb writer making stupid choices" and then pick apart everything I say to justify their existing position. On the other hand, perhaps it will be illuminating, though a single comment here can't do justice to years of me trying to find a good answer.
I have considered other options, like trying to do an e-book or a subscription or something. I don't think that works.
One of my sites has information for homeless people. They can't afford to pay me. Another has information on alternative health approaches. Ads in that space are notoriously terrible in terms of touting unproven cures that can be downright dangerous. That site has no ads, in part because I have no desire to be inadvertently hawking colloidal silver.
These are problems I feel I have good solutions for. Everyone acts like they can't be solved. I think they can.
People are endlessly critical of the fact that you can't trust a person telling you do X for your health if they are selling X or you can't trust your doctor when he is in the pocket of big pharmacy, etc. But if you try to just put out information and that's it, you can't monetize it.
So we have this situation where serious problems are growing worse because you can't monetize an effective approach. People keep doing stuff that is making the problem worse because that is all the system supports.
And maybe someday I will cave and throw in the towel and stop doing something I believe in and go do something that pays better, thou it makes me feel I am selling my soul. But so far I am not there yet. I would still like to try to make a difference putting out independent information about things that work. But I also would like to stop living hand to mouth.
It sucks and as an occasional author, I think I know just how badly it sucks.
I still do write a blog - well, sometimes, twice a year or something - but that's because I can afford it currently and because the process of writing itself is, I feel, beneficial to me in some ways and because I can choose the topic I'm writing about freely, without worrying about views and revenue (both are nonexistent, so...)
It sucks. Literacy may be common nowadays, but there's a vast gap between simply writing and writing well, just like there's a difference between reading and reading comprehension. I have a feeling that most people don't see these differences and conclude that "it's all just writing, anybody could do it". They won't actually try themselves, but they know all about it and anyway they lose focus in the middle of the first paragraph.
Sorry for ranting, I just wanted to say that it's really hard to write good content and that people don't necessarily value good content all that much.
Your comment is very much appreciated.
It is a central issue that I wrestle with. I think I know useful information. I think that information is better than a lot of what's out there. But, yes, it takes time to create good content that conveys anything useful.
So either I can try to convey that I think I know something of value, which will get me attacked as arrogant, full if m yawl, etc. Or I can try to be humble about it, in which case people think blogging isn't actually worth anything.
I am quite frustrated.
There are people making money online via Patreon and other avenues. A lot of that seems to be essentially entertainment. And then we wonder why the world is going to hell.
I sometimes get told that people really value my participation in online forums and the wisdom I share in comments. Guess what? Participating in online forums pays for even less than blogging.
This is not what my argument boils down to. My question was clear: "why keep giving away your content for free?" I never said you need to stop writing _or_ accept that you have to do it for free. In fact you already know that since you state this later in your post:
> I have considered other options, like trying to do an e-book or a subscription or something. I don't think that works.
Honestly I don't know what to tell you. I guess the world doesn't work the way you'd wish. Artists have always had it hard in this world. I don't see why that will change now. In fact, I think it'll get worse since it's so easy to distribute digital art and people like myself are willing to give away content for free. Just as I'm willing to post for free. And willing to do almost all I do outside of formal work for free. It makes me fundamentally disagree with this claim you make:
> So we have this situation where serious problems are growing worse because you can't monetize an effective approach.
Not everything can be monetized. Not everything deserves to be monetized. You shouldn't do everything simply because it can be monetized. (In fact, you _don't_ do everything because it can be monetized as you've explicitly stated in this post.)
> These are problems I feel I have good solutions for. Everyone acts like they can't be solved. I think they can.
I honestly don't understand what you consider a problem.
> And maybe someday I will cave and throw in the towel and stop doing something I believe in and go do something that pays better, thou it makes me feel I am selling my soul. But so far I am not there yet. I would still like to try to make a difference putting out independent information about things that work. But I also would like to stop living hand to mouth.
Why is an either or? Why can you not work to support yourself and put out independent information?
The extremely short version is that good quality anything takes substantial time, energy and other resources to produce. It really isn't reasonable for the world to expect good quality content completely for free. That is the essence of the ongoing presence of articles like the one under discussion here: the internet has historically been financed by advertising because everyone wants it for free and now we see ads as evil and messing everything up. But we still want it for free.
That's the issue here. You can't really have it both ways.
I guess I don't fully understand your point. That people value the wrong things? (I would strongly agree.) I don't think you're quite right that people feel entitled to receive things for free because the fact is that they are provided things for free all the time. You're not having trouble monetizing things because no one will pay, but really because no one feels the need to pay. Given the deluge of content available, the relative value of yours just maybe isn't that much by average people. There is a very large amount of free content of extremely high value. This predates the internet, but with the internet we are flooded with it. That's why this statement (at least made so generally) is definitely wrong:
> That's the issue here. You can't really have it both ways.
> That's the issue here. You can't really have it both ways.
The fact that you can access it without paying for it doesn't mean it didn't involve substantial resources to create it. Acting like one should not have to pay anything to cover those costs is the essence of expecting slave labor.
In every single discussion I have seen on HN on this topic, that is what boils down to. Whatever time, education, experience, effort, and other resources it took to create quality content gets hand waved away with "well, I can get it for free now. So why would I pay?"
Never mind that these discussions are inevitably in relation to an article about advertising, how much people hate it, how evil it is and so on. Those ads are how free content and free services and free internet stuff came into being.
You ultimately can't have it both ways. People want ads to die. Those ads pay for all this stuff you take for granted will be available for free. Reiterating that you aren't willing to pay doesn't solve the problem under discussion here.
Ads are the mechanism that made stuff "free." If people want them to disappear, then they need to find another means to finance that content. Without that, ads are here to stay and their aggressive, manipulative approach just gets worse in the face of ad blockers etc.
I've never said such a thing.
In fact, I agree 100% with this comment which you also apparently agree with: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16307617
You must read my comments here with that context. I agree 100% with that comment and it also accurately describes my writing process as well as my rate of output. Nothing said there contradicts my posts.
You seem to think everyone should be a high paid developer and any writing they do should be on the side. It spits on the idea of writing as a profession. Or other content production.
Anyway, I don't really see this as a productive or constructive exchange. So I don't imagine I will continue it.
> You seem to think everyone should be a high paid developer and any writing they do should be on the side.
Also when you say that my position is "that content creators should apparently not expect to be paid" I would say that (1) that is not really either a good description of my beliefs in general, but (2) that yes there are many cases where you shouldn't expect to be paid simply because of what's already available. This is no value judgment and honestly I can't understand how you could reasonably disagree. I also don't recommend swimming upstream and expecting the same results as still water. The market for content and ideas is as it is and to no one should expect to be able to ignore that and live in their bubble.
I'm fine ending this exchange. It's clear to me that we would need to be in the same room with a cup of coffee and some patience for you to understand me. You're hung up on certain ideas I have not professed and seem to be reading my posts within a historical context of many other posts. That's unfortunate because I don't think we disagree very much in general. I generally respect as well as agree with your posts on HN.
Regardless, I hope you find a way to work as you wish and support yourself.
My list probably won't include any blogs, SaaS or most news sites. I don't see any contradiction, if those content creators can't get someone to pay for their content they will have go either give it away for free or stop producing. Option 1 is what I'm doing.
There's a mismatch between the value they ask and the value they offer. It's a deep and wide gulf and results from wildly mismatched wants, needs and assumptions.
Again, it isn't exactly raking me rich, so to speak. So I sincerely think this is primarily an excuse.
I do agree that it's frequently used as an excuse, though.
I'm not ready to cave and become a sex worker either. But I would consider that to be 10 million times more respectable than shilling bs info because that pays.
A few alternative phrases: having a job, paying the bills, making ends meet, etc.
Few choose to be "really sick of being poor" while progressing towards their goals; success to you!
And this is not really a discussion about me. I happen to be impacted by it and willing to speak to firsthand experience as a content producer.
This discussion is about advertising and how that supports the free internet everyone expects while everyone then complains loudly about how advertising is the work of the devil.
Blaming me for failing to find a solution here when monetization of content is in widespread crisis is a convenient means to sidestep the actual issue.
Edit: In case it's not clear, my recommendation is to gain experience on something smaller/easier. Take the skill that you can use (or learn another one), find others using that skill to make money directly, and copy them step-by-step until it works for you. "Fail fast" doesn't mean give up on your dreams; use the experience gained for the harder sell. Insisting the only choice is between meaningful content and soul selling is a false dichotomy.
Lifestyle-funding, paying audiences must be carefully built/grown. (Ideally, this means completely disintermediating all third parties; in practice this means keeping a diverse group of them at a healthy distance as a necessary evil -- especially for initial exposure, aka advertising.) The whole point of this discussion is that allowing anyone in-between the content creator and their audience inevitably breaks down the relationship as the middlemen prioritize what makes them the most money.
[Edited a bunch to make it clear this is entirely on-topic; take care. At the absolute least: collect email addresses for a newsletter.]
I'm done replying to you. This is not good faith engagement.
Your edits elaborating on how it is my fault in your opinion don't make your comment any better.
>no one has any sympathy whatsoever for
Didn't mean to fall into this category by ham-fistedly communicating what I personally consider a baby step in a positive direction.
What a fabulously convenient means to silence and further disempower the most crapped on members of society: we don't want to know you are amongst us. Don't you dare support your points by admitting that you are poor in spite of 6 years of college and a long list of other attributes that suggest you are highly competent. If makes us uncomfortable to confront the possibility that maybe poor people aren't all stupid, uneducated, lazy losers. We prefer to imagine that if you do all the right things, life will be grand.
You continue to pour your heart and soul into your projects, that is clear. Few are willing to be as transparent here; I appreciate learning from your perspective, the responses your approach elicits (even in myself), and the results of your approach.
Solidifying a concrete application for my own future reference: if in the future an opportunity arises for me to share something I've worked on with HN, I will don my flame-resistant suit, thank people for taking the time to interact publicly, and try to apply as much of the advice I prioritize as possible and helpful (with the understanding that I will have a hard time evaluating things objectively) while not disparaging what remains. I also hope to apply these tactics to unsolicited advice/critiques, as has already been clearly demonstrated as difficult for me!
Changing gears to actively pursue monetization is tough and I continue to wish you the best as you do so. My analogy is you've found your dream job and now want to get paid to do it! Thanks much for your time.
Users are now used to free services, getting them to pay will prove hard, especially if there is a free alternative, as many app makers and news sites have discovered.
Not to mention no-one wants to sign up with their credit card info to a few dozen different sites just to do that.
An automated system built in to the browser that bills a user determined amount monthly and apportions that to sites based on usage solves most of that.
How much would you pay a month to have no advertising and no invasive tracking on the web and support content that you like?
I'd be happy to spend $5-10 dollars doing that - I'm already spending $60 a month just for Internet access in the first place. If enough people sign on to that, and enough creators can use that as a revenue model then it will provide a way to fund content without the need for advertising.
It isn't exactly raking in the dough. Most people just do not want to pay. The lack of a convenient means to pay small sums is an excuse to justify that. If it weren't, I should have more income.
If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400.
But, no. Most people don't go "That totally enriched my life. I shall give a dollar for this info."
That said, I don't think there are any sites I really frequent any more [though HN is one I scan often], I've not noticed PP tip jars on the small number of sites I browse.
Do you know of any means to pay money online anonymously? I really don't.
I guess cryptocurrency is theoretically supposed to do that, but it seems more like weird speculation than an actual online currency. I haven't pursued it because it doesn't seem like a genuine means to get paid.
Then I changed it from a donate button next to the download button to a 'pay what you want' button (including $0) that you have to click before downloading.
It was the exact same link to PayPal, but I made more in the first month of having that up than I did in the preceding 5 years.
It's all about friction. A dollar or not, a PayPal payment is high friction.
> If half of the 40k page views one piece of mine got kicked in a dollar, even after PayPal took it's cut, I would have had $13,400.
You don't realise it, but you're essentially advocating for brave's payment system right there
Imagine every visitor to your site paid you a small amount based on how much they visited, and it was all automated and frictionless so that the user didn't have to click anything - they'd just visit read an article and you'd just get paid. That's what brave is trying to build. If you're getting 40k views for your articles, check out their docs for publishers: https://brave.com/publishers/
Are you already paying money into Brave? Or is this still some hand wavy theory that someday it might pay someone?
So I have $5 of credit from that which will (according to them) be paid out to creators after a month. After that I will likely pay in to it because I want to support the ecosystem.
I am willing to use my experience to cast light on this issue. But I do not appreciate people then turning that into a chance to take pot shots at me personally.
My point is that every single time these discussions come up, people say they would like a means to monetize content that fits X parameters. Those parameters include low friction of use, widespread accessibility and micro payments. So I created a tip jar using the most well established payment system on the internet and made the lowest payment amount just a dollar.
I rarely get a dollar. Most people willing to pay anything give more than that.
My firsthand experience suggests that this list of criteria people put forth is merely an excuse and they aren't really willing to pay anything.
Because I hear this list of criteria endlessly and I have met them all to the best of my ability with current tech by making a PayPal tip jar available. I do get some tips. But I have also become convinced that the people in these discussions listing all the reasons they don't pay while using an as blocker are just giving excuses. The truth is they won't pay.
This is the crux of the problem. Ads are how you monetize content when no one wants to pay for it. It is how TV content was originally monetized.
And if most people simply are unwilling to pay, then you have your answer: ads are here to stay because it is the only way to reliably monetize content.
If people find ads so evil and objectionable, actually opening up their wallets and paying for subscriptions, Patreon support, tips, etc is the way to get content producers to drop ads. But most people don't actually want to do that.
I think herein lies the crux of the problem - the solution of a pay-on-visit system requires further curation by a populous that probably just isn't willing or eager to do so. Imagine such a solution a year down the line when it's fully implemented, and now people are complaining about death by a thousand papercuts, as every article suddenly begins to optimize for pay per view. We already have complaints about slideshows that load up fresh ads on 14 pages, 2 of which are actual ads instead of content; imagine how frustrating it would be to put a real dollar value on every day browsing of content. It will just encourage centralization more, imo, as agglomerating sites can take the hit and present content for free while individual content creators will struggle even more.
Everyone hates advertising, but there are ways of doing it appropriately. The ethical considerations on advertising aside, the system itself provides a useful exchange for content creators and their audience. The problem lies in the third party here, the advertisers, and how much free reign they've been given over what an ad can do once it's loaded. The resale value of private information is probably worth more than the return on investment for the ad itself in the long run, and that's a major problem, because the audience loses out on privacy (and often security) as a result, and the content creator never sees the benefit of the resale value. The imbalance of power is too great here, and current regulatory attempts (Cookie banners) have no teeth and are ineffectual.
I really don't think the answer for most people is an extra $10-$20 a month on micropayments. I think the natural conclusion of such a system is further entrenching Facebook/Google and other such social media giants.
I think instead wrangling advertising into a system which more fairly compensates the content creator and respects user privacy is the right way to go, but at this point that's not happening without heavy intervention/regulation with some teeth to make it really hurt.
Edit: Corrected "balance of power" to "imbalance of power"
Sure, but the user is in control of that to some degree with how it's currently implemented in Brave. I can choose to exclude sites from receiving payment and I can also choose to award a greater proportion of my monthly spending to specific sites of my choosing.
If a site is engaging in dark-patterns to attract my money, then no money for them.
> I think the natural conclusion of such a system is further entrenching Facebook/Google and other such social media giants.
Browsers will be able to work around that though once they establish that a certain site is behaving like a walled garden. Brave already does this with Youtube. Rather than payments going to the entire site, Brave attributes views and viewing time to the individual channels you watch. If some other megasite has a significant amount of individual content creators I'd imagine they'd do a similar thing.