> The blogs the author misses aren't written to make money off of ad traffic, they were just written to put down ideas.
This is what I've been pointing out for years as the lost core of the internet.
This is what I've been pointing out for years as the lost core of the internet.
Patreon, Etsy, OnlyFans, Kickstarter, and even Github (just to scratch the surface) all serve to put pressure on creators to turn their hobbies into second jobs.
I had some hobby pages in the 1990s that got a lot of views and came high up in search results. None of them were ever deliberately publicised. I doubt that any of my material would show in the top 1000 of any web search today.
Hobbies for most people are a way to spend money, not make it. No one I know has "side hustles"
It’s social media, it’s private blogging platforms and it’s the plight for power.
It's the way you're given knowledge, slow with thought control and subtle hints
It's the fast talk they use to abuse and feed my brain
It stretches for as far as the eye can see
It's reality, fuck it, it's everything but me
Atmosphere - Scapegoat, with some blogging additions
Almost all news organizations -- they're not bloggers but chances are they're using blogging software (mostly WordPress) -- have figured this out. And they're still not making enough money from advertising. Hence subscriptions. Bloggers can go this route directly with https://substack.com.
Google-owned YouTube's willingness to compensate those who make popular videos has fueled that service's growth and helped it draw a young audience.
The fact that Twitter, Facebook and Instagram have no way of "paying" its top performers, as it were, is interesting. You get paid in eyeballs. In exposure. Since the pay for blogs is usually non-existent, there's some value in the "likes," and most people who envision making money off of their social-media/internet presence need to get a side hustle to their side hustle -- a product they can make and sell.
Youtube is a good example. It used to be so fun to just throw up videos on the internet, without caring how far they would really go. I definitely think there are great content creators on it nowadays and I'm glad that they're being paid for their hard work, but it still feels like we've lost something.