Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

Comment by axegon_ | Hacker News Reader

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I agree. Many years ago I was really happy with medium as a reader. And the feed algorithm was decent enough. By no means the perfect content but for the most part it pushed forward things I was interested in. However, the monetization model turned medium(originally a decent blogging platform) into tumblr and it was a race to the bottom from that point. Any website that asks you to register in order to read a blog post immediately goes on my blacklist.

What is annoying though is that often people who self-host their blogs make the exact same mistake. More and more often I see something that will grab my attention and when I get to the bottom of a blog post, I find something along the lines of "The full guide is available in my free e-book, which you can download from here". And when you click "here", you are greeted with "Please enter your e-mail address". Sure, everyone has a spam-mail type of thing or mailinator or whatever but this is still a terrible thing to do.

It's rather telling that the first thing Medium does is flash a login prompt in your face when landing on one of their pages. At that point I tend to go elsewhere.

This isn’t medium’s fault. It’s the writers who’ve opted to put articles behind paywall to earn from the MPP.

That's not actually a thing that happens anymore FYI.

Writing good content take time and the content is valuable.

I don't see it wrong to use it as marketing strategy.

I agree there's nothing wrong with it. But does it work? Does Medium make money? It might be, despite the whining, they have it right in that they don't let an expectation of "this is free" ever develop.

That strategy might be better than writing a long-ish blog entry as a teaser, where the reader thinks they are going to get their information for free, only to be told "Psyche! You've actually got to pay for it!"

> this is still a terrible thing to do.

What’s the alternative, assuming the blogger doesn’t want to give everything away for free?

If the content is of any real value, I'd be more than happy to pay for it with money. 10 bucks? Sure, here you go. A much better option than getting emails such as "20 lessons I learned from my job interview" or whatever.

Everyone says they'd do that, but I find really hard to believe.

I create rare, valuable information that saves people money and headaches. On a good month, 2% of my revenue will come from donations. Usually, it's 0%. At best, it pays for a meal and a beer. This website has 135k page views per month.

If that's how much I get from teaching people how to navigate German bureaucracy, I doubt you'll make anything from your opinions alone.

Some of us actually do. A quick scroll through my paypal, I've donated somewhere over 1000 euros in the past two years to various foundations and individual content creators.

And having some experience with German bureaucracy and taxes, and also having never lived in Germany nor speaking German, I'm fully aware how convoluted and complicated this can be and I could definitely see myself donating/paying for useful information if I didn't have a good accountant at my disposal.

I agree, on the grand scheme you won't make a whole lot but even with a population of 83 million, even if you add another 1 million like myself, your content still fits a relatively narrow niche. I'd love to give some advice but I honestly have no idea.

You are an exception. If one in 83 unique visitors donated I'd be well off, but it's not the case. I'm a bit tired of people pretending the internet could survive on donations and micropayments.

Affiliate marketing works well for my niche. I wanted to start similar sites about other topics, but if those don't naturally lead to certain purchases, they're extremely hard to effectively monetise.

Perhaps. But you see my point, right? There is something morally corrupt in offering "free" content while compiling a spam mailing list.

That's another pattern I really dislike, and deliberately avoid. I don't want to use my content as a bargaining chip to collect emails or what-have-you. I have that luxury because my topic is easily monetised. Most content creators don't.

In general, the internet got incredibly annoying, but I can understand why. Part of it is because we feel entitled to free content. There are few business models that allow people to be rewarded for their work while still offering a product for free. It usually involves selling something the user's data or attention.

I dont think you can make money by sharing information to individuals in that sort of way today. There are people that manage to do it (self help books and all) but I dont think people will pay for online content. I can think of 3 ways that this might be monetize able. The first is to put it into a book. People will buy books. The second is targeting businesses. They'll pay for market research etc. And the third is offering consulting services to navigate the beuorocracy based on your expertise. Even if the info is free amd online, some people want to pay, and you'd be making money off of sharing that information.

I can. It's how I pay the bills.

I insist on keeping the content unconditionally free, and donations don't work, but affiliate marketing does. I help people navigate certain boring purchases, so it lends itself to that sort of monetisation. I'd be recommending those products and services anyway.

Unfortunately, it incentivizes dishonest recommendations and passing ads as content. I chose not to do that, but I know I'd get paid more to recommend the wrong things. Since it's blended into the content, you'd be abusing people's trust in your content. At least banner ads were separate from the text.

I do not offer services either. My goal was to help as many people as possible, and that would go against it. Information should be free, especially when poor people need it the most. I also want the website to run itself. If I wanted to be on the computer full time, I'd just get a job.

Maybe you just need to package it differently? I know I've bought Kindle books on similar issues and that there are people who work as consultants doing such things. Not to say that you necessarily want to become a consultant, but you don't even necessarily need to create new content... just stick some of it behind a paywall or in an ebook.

I started writing a reference for long distance motorcycle travel, and that's how I intend to distribute it. I don't expect to make anything from it, but the more linear, prosaic format would fit nicely on a Kindle screen.

The website mentioned above is more of a "visit it when you need it" resource. It's painfully boring to read, as it's written like a plain English instruction manual. It wouldn't be an interesting book.

I saw the following model work: offer a compilation of your best (or themed xyz..) articles for money. Add that you can mostly find these scattered on the site anyway. Very fair, and people would pay for getting an organized package vs clicking through random posts.

It's not a bad idea.

I am personally against it for my website in particular though. I insist on keeping everything on it open and free. Immigration advice should help everyone, not just developers with a generous relocation bonus.

I'd much rather invest the effort into making the content more navigable/discoverable. This is actually what I'm working on right now.

Again though, this is just personal preference for this specific website. Selling packaged information could work. I did buy a motorcycle travel book that was a rehash of the author's YouTube channel.

Being honest and saying that the blog post is merely a teaser in the beginning.

I think at this stage there's so much content that they could save their time and ours by not writing it in the first place.

https://www.sigle.io/ built on Blockstack is an interesting one.

So you read the full blog post for free, then you get to the bottom and see that they are promoting an e-book free in exchange for an email address and that's terrible to you? Does it piss you off when authors don't give away their books for free as well?

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