Internet - Blogging

In the spirit of listening to my audience, I spent quite a bit of time thinking about alternative economic models for generating web revenue. Given my vastly unpopular stand on internet advertising, I gave my detractors an open ear and an open mind, and those that had something more useful to say than "ur a douch bag" had their own opinions on ads and web monetization.

As a brief experiment I switched this site to an ad-free, voluntary donation site. Now one, I know that at three months old no one is reading my personal blog except my friends and a few strays sent by Google. Two, the type of content necessary for a voluntary donation site is rather unique. Think about it, how many web sites have you encountered whose content you enjoyed so much that showing your appreciation for the content with your wallet felt like a good idea? Precious, precious few.

In fact, it isn't a valid means of making income, period. If you look at the sites that encourage voluntary donation they fall into two categories: blogs that are already monetized with advertising, and sites with specific content that is so good they offer physical product based on their content, ala theoatmeal.com and 27/6. Hell, I even bought something off 27/6 the second time I went there. theoatmeal.com has a donation banner, but I guarantee you that posters and comics are what make the site owner money.

Another option is the pay wall. I'm not even going to get into that. The pay wall does one thing and one thing only: sends your potential readers elsewhere. The only valid use for a pay wall is a site that offers a service that people want and have no qualms about paying for that service. Period.

What does that leave? Nothing is free. Hosting costs money. Taking the time to develop web content is not going to appeal to many people if there is nothing to be gained from doing so. I'm not even talking about making a lot of money. This is an enjoyable hobby for a lot of content publishers, a hobby they will participate in for very little return for the sheer enjoyment of it. Since most content providers are not making their livelihood doing so, they have to ask the questions: is the time I am spending doing this taking me away from my kids, my wife, my friends? How much would the time I am spending doing this earn me if I worked the same amount of overtime at my day job? The answer is that people are already practically contributing their time and resources to generate web content. A lot of it is crap, but there is a lot of brilliant content out there as well. I feel people should get something for it, and advertising on content pages is the LEAST intrusive way to do so.

So all of you ad blockers out there, ask yourself if potentially shutting down content you like is worth the convenience of saving a few bits of bandwidth and a few milliseconds of your time. How many sites do you see whose advertising is so intrusive that you have to block the advertising? I can't think of a single site that would make me do it. To my mind such a site wouldn't have content worth looking at in the first place. If you're a savvy enough web user to install an ad block plugin, certainly you're smart enough to filter through Google search results and recognize which results are good and which are crap?

I've read every word on how no one controls what you see and do on your computer, and aversion to ads falls under that maxim. I would simply like you to step away from your negative reaction to advertising on the web and consider the alternatives. What kind of web do you want to see in five years? A free and open web that invites people to create content, good and bad? Or, a web that is much smaller because people were unwilling to pay for it? I think you are all far less likely to donate to a site or subscribe to a site than you are willing to endure a few Adsense units. Get over your selfish sense of entitlement and pay your dues.