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Comment by wongarsu | Hacker News Reader

Small scale personal blogs cost next to nothing (as in: reasonable web hosting packets for $2/year exist), why would they need ads?

Wikipedia on the other hand makes lots of money with one of the most obtrusive ads on the internet (giant banner that slowly rolls down stating some variant of "if everyone donates just $5 we can stop annoying you right now"). But despite getting more and more donations every year they don't make the ad less annoying or run it shorter. So I have zero confidence that giving them another revenue stream will help

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When personal blogs flourished in the early millennium, keeping the owner somehow compensated made it more likely that good blogs would keep going, because no one’s time to research, write, and then copyedit intellectual content is utterly free. That doesn’t necessarily require an abusive ecosystem of ads that track people personally, but e.g. an affiliate link whenever a book was cited brought in a few hundred euro a year and made maintaining the blog feel worthwhile for some authors.

Bingo. This is insanely important.

Even if someone is comfortable, $100 a month can make it worthwhile to them to spend time considering and writing.

Sometimes that money just proves someone's finding big value in your continued efforts.

Hosting doesn't cost much. Content production isn't free.

It is free for wikipedia.

Twitter is worth and spends billions but wikipedia should run on fumes? Are people here collectively insane?

People here hold multiple opinions because there are multiple people here, not because the single mind they share is insane.

The content production still isn't free; other people just bear the costs.

Yes, that's why I said it's free for wikipedia. The editors are not wikipedia, as much as the site would like us to feel. I left editing a decade ago, but spent a lot of time editing Wikipedia during university. It was not worth the time, and I regret not chasing skirts instead.

For a personal blog? Its free.

Only if the time required to research and write has no value.

That is why personal blogs do not create content on the scale and depth required to be sufficiently high-profile and monetizable. If your blog can't be found on the first page of Google for questions people are asking, it may as well not exist to anyone but yourself.

I am thinking of things like Slate Star Codex. Scott would have continued to write even if he hadn't been able to run ads, because he can't not write. That is the kind of thing I want to see more of, instead of people creating content to get famous.

Siskind is a guy who reportedly said, "Blog followers are useful to me because they expand important ideas and network with important people." Which sounds exactly like a person creating content to get famous.

Exactly. I write to be read. Putting up a personal blog post is, regrettably, one of the lowest-ROI ways to spend my time. And that's true even if I don't care about revenue, but just want to create value. A solid blog post will take me a couple days of research, writing, and polishing.

Calling that request for donations an annoying ad is extremist.

Wikipedia doesn't show you ads from Burg3rking. And am also sure they'll do just fine with/out your donation.

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