Most of your posts in this thread seem to be complaining about people consuming your content without giving you any value in return. If this is the case, they why keep giving away your content for free?
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.
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.
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.