Sham news sites make big bucks from fake views

I know quite a lot about a number of subjects. I would love nothing better than to spend my time providing quality content on those subjects. This has been a long-time desire of mine and it usually feels like it is going nowhere fast, though a more accurate description is perhaps "it's very painfully slow and might arrive on the twelfth of never."

I talk about me in part because I spent a whole lot of time in therapy to sort my personal crap, so my observations about people very often hit a nerve in a completely unforgivable way. Talking about me goes weird places and people think I am a narcissist ...etc...but it's usually less disastrous than if I make what seems to me a painfully obvious observation about someone else and it wasn't obvious to anyone but me and everyone is shocked and the person I've said it about was sure they had hidden their secrets well and blah blah blah. It's a case of "Let's take her out and shoot her promptly after tea."

I'm a former homemaker -- military wife and homeschooling mom -- and I was Director of Community Life for a time for The TAG Project. I raised two twice exceptional sons. I know a helluva lot about raising challenging children and I began blogging due to demand for what I knew on some email lists years ago.

I've struggled with figuring out how to translate that to a successful blog and the people who could vouch for me won't for various reasons. Some of that appears to be straight up sexism, but I can't prove that and naming names publicly of people who have actively engaged in polite character assassination would be me "behaving badly" and "making personal attacks" because all their uber polite mud slinging was in accordance with the rules and blah blah blah.

I have a serious medical condition and I've spent years getting myself healthier. This literally gets me accused of being insane and I've been thrown off of various forums where the mods told me that the people saying horribly shitty things to me in violation of the rules were fine and I was the problem. I get told "If that's true, where are the studies?" and when I can only say "This is my first-hand experience. There are no studies." it gets completely dismissed as anecdotal and no one on the planet is at all interested in what the hell I know and the entire world basically wants me to shut the fuck up entirely on the topic, which makes no sense to me whatsoever for a world that claims to want to help people like me to be healthier. There is zero curiosity at all in what I've done, what I think about those experiences, etc.

I know a lot about moderation and people tend to not want to hear that either. See above about how much time I've spent in therapy. When the truth hurts and I'm the person who spoke the truth without realizing it was some humongous freaking secret, welp, off with her head. And I also don't really understand that at all because if what is being done currently sucks, it seems to me people would welcome better information. But they mostly don't when it comes to certain topics. Instead, they would rather keep doing what they are doing now rather than hear "You could do something different from that and here are a few suggestions I have."

I've spent a whole lot of years trying to learn to talk about certain things well, things that are touchy subjects. And just this year I've had a few things do decently in terms of traffic.

But I remain stymied because I cannot fathom how people continue to think a) I don't have any knowledge worth any money at all, meanwhile I periodically get glowing praise for my forum comments in spite of actively trying to discourage such because public praise tends to go weird places socially and b) the whole "writers are producing crap" thing isn't related to the low pay for the industry.

To me, these things are very obviously interrelated. If I could spend my time focusing on doing quality work for a few websites of mine instead of scrambling to come up with enough freelance income, I think I could provide some of that quality content people claim they want.

And anytime I talk about this, it basically gets framed by other people like I'm just whining instead of people hearing "Look, if you actually want quality writing, here is a person who is capable of doing quality writing and can't make enough money from it to support themselves adequately. Here is a concrete example of this very problem and a potential opportunity to begin solving it."

But that seems to get interpreted as me "panhandling the internet" and soft begging for funds rather than me saying "I have literally spent decades trying to figure out how one can provide solid content and get enough money from that to make that their main focus during the day and I can't make it freaking work."

It's late. I'm tired. I've been saying these things for literally years until I'm blue in the face and there seems to be no path forward. People just here "The bitch wants money from me. Not my problem. Moving on." and utterly fail to hear "This person right in front of you has been wrestling with this very question for literally decades and can't find a solution. And she's smart and stuff. Maybe it's systemic and not the fault of the writers/editors/scapegoat du jour."

This comment no doubt sounds like a rant. All my efforts to follow the stated and unstated rules in life, the universe and everything just feel like a freaking straight jacket forbidding me from actually making a point to people who absolutely don't want the point made because they want their excellent writing done by slave labor and don't want that fact pointed out.

Because after all these years, I feel like if that were not the case, somehow, somewhere along the way, something would have given. Because I don't need a fuckton of money. I'm not looking to get crazy rich. I would just like to eat every day (and have a few other essentials covered) and can't manage that much.

So I think I probably need to walk away from this discussion at this time because it just feels like it makes me look bad (even though it shouldn't) and accomplishes nothing whatsoever. I've literally been saying the same things on HN for years and years and it apparently makes no difference whatsoever. I keep hearing the same rebuttals and I keep feeling like a lone voice howling into the void.

Lots of people use ad blockers. The HN crowd is particularly bad about this.

People on HN actively look for ways to get around pay walls. Just to be clear since everyone seems to routinely assume that I'm making a moral argument, I don't use paywalls for my content and I don't have a big problem with people looking for ways around them. I'm just pointing out that they aren't exactly working well for people trying to monetize a thing that involves publishing writing.

People also have a very big problem with writing used as a means to get you to make purchases of some sort, aka content marketing. People are understandably suspicious of writing whose goal is to get you to buy a thing so the writer and publisher can pay their own bills.

I'm glad you have subscriptions. Good for you. But as someone who has put time into developing good writing, gets lots of feedback that I write well and my writing is "valued" but who continues to fail to find some means to adequately monetize my writing, I find all these arguments ridiculous.

I would love to go Get A Real Job like everyone keeps telling me to do. Or even make an app, though I can't manage to get actual coding related questions answered here.*

I've been here over a decade. HN gets over 5 million visitors a month. Between my old handle and this one, I have nearly 50k karma, which presumably is a proxy for "member of the community in good standing whose participation is valued."

And I still can't get what I need, which makes me slightly suspicious that it basically can't be done at all given the state of the world. So, to my mind, saying (essentially) journalists "just need to write better" amounts to victim blaming.

* https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21677535