davemel37

>Perhaps Trump should ask Israel for help in building his wall.

I'm sure he will ask them for engineering help and guidance.

I'm not going to pretend to understand the nuances of these issues, but it seems to me that governments are artificially creating these trade deficits with tax and import/export tariff schemes. I don't understand them, but I don't see how it's a bad idea to at least explore how Chinas currency manipulation and various trade deficits/ tariffs can better reflect the true market and not be artificially manipulated by various governments.

If the trade deficit with Mexico has to do with import/export inbalances to favor that deficit, I see no reason not to try to renegotiate it.

Again, I have no real working knowledge of these issues, just a cursory and uninformed opinion.

> Screwing the country over further economically sounds like the worst way to solve this problem.

First, I am just a random uneducated and ignorant American, so take my two cents for what it is...only two cents.

From my vantage point, cutting off the drug cartels access to the US market could potentially do wonders to shifting the balance of power and helping Mexico in the long run.

Also, as unpopular as it is, the US governments first mandate is to protect it's citizens. Sometimes that means making tough choices that doesn't help everybody, but responsibility takes maturity and a willingness to consider unpopular options.

>His actions are clearly going to increase the flow of illegal immigrants into the US, and now that these people can be tossed into federal prison...

I think missed the key word in his contract "CRIMINAL". He is not talking about people who broke the law by illegally imigrating. He is talking about FELONS who ALSO came here illegally. They certainly don't belong roaming our streets unchecked.

Contributing illegal immigrants is a different discussion, but convicted felons, rapists, murderers, etc... who come here illegally belong in Mexican prisons and should be mexico's problem...if they can't do it, than yes, well put them in prison...to KEEP YOUR AND YOUR FAMILY SAFE.

> It doesn't make sense to demand that Mexico pay for it. It's like building a wall on your property and demanding your neighbors pay for it.

When buying a house, wouldnt you try to negotiate for seller concessions like paying for repairs?

Trumps wall comments were always in conjunction with discussing the massive trade deficit with Mexico. If we are in a stronger position to negotiate with Mexico, why wouldnt we negotiate the best deal we can get?

If you really think about it. We only need this wall because of Mexico, so why should we pay if we dont have to?

Most agency advertisers have known about this for well over a year. To my knowledge, no one is particulary interested in it.

>You could hope to find one person to fill any two of those jobs, but all you'll get out of a 'scrappy content marketer' is a vacant position and a series of burnouts.

One person can easily manage all of this and more very affordably with freelancers, tools, and a decent process.

Where you go wrong is when the person managing is "figuring it out on the fly."

Use canva or stencil for design, use textbroker or copypress for content at scale, all that is left is building an editorial calendar, planning content promotion, blogger outreach, all of which can be done with tools, etc...

...if you have clarity about what exactly needs to be done from ideation to promotion, its really not that hard for one person with tools and freelancers to execute on.

Exactly. I find it ironic this article cites Snowden while literally sounding like the very spying that Snowden exposed and fought.

It has less to do with what the public clicks and more to do with the level of quality competition amongst advertisers. As more and more brands get smart about native, the networks will push out the arbitrage sites and other bad actors.

Bad advertisers is a sign that an ad network actually works but hasnt matured yet.

TL;DR dont throw out the ad networks with the bad advertisers. Its often a precursor to a better solution for everyone involved.

All you really need to know is that when ad networks work, the first people to exploit are bad actors taking advantage of little competition. The networks need these guys to survive, so they tolerate it until they can afford to kick them out.

As the network matures, it kicks out the bad actors amd it becomes a healthy and effective medium for brands to communicate with consumers in a win-win-win way.

Even ad arbitrage can be a net win. If Foxnews buys a native ad on drudge report for a timely article, thats probably a net win for users... but technically, since Fox is supported by ads, its ad arbitrage.

The "viral" and "slideshow forced pageview" sites will never be a net win in my opinion...

but a quality publishers who is ad supported running arbitrage with native can be a net win. (Although, I would quicker call that audience building than straight arbitrage.)

but, I agree. These single click ad arbitrage sites are pure evil and should be kicked off the native networks.

I wrote in a different thread about Cointent that I believe the "pay for ad free" model is addressing the problem in the wrong way. First, the pain of annoying ads already has a solution. We are already bombarded by content that its not very painful to just switch to another publisher and read a different article that is less annoying (unless its breaking news.)

Also,Your solution doesnt address the problem at the moment I am experiencing the pain. You need to win on intellectual grounds without the emotional drivers. Youll probably get some traction and users but never mainstream scale. its too disconnected from the pain point.

My idea/opinion, "charge a donation for sharing content." When someone feels compelled to share, they are seeking emotional validation, thats worth paying for.

Technically, all advertising is arbitrage between the value of the eyeballs and the cost to reach those eyeballs...Adwords and Facebook were swamped with arbitrage advertisers until they got better at relevancy.

Arbitrage by definition will stop working eventually. you are exploiting information assymetry and a market inefficiency.

Once better targeting is in place and mainstream advertisers crack the native cookie youll see the arbitrage die out like it did with Shopping comparison engines in adwords.

The underlying idea of promoting content natively while reading other content is a better user experience than other advertising and can democratize smaller publishers (with laser targeted relevancy placement opportunities) and brands reaching consumers in a very engaging and relevant way for consumers.

Whats missing today are two ingredients.

1. better policing of the advertisers/quality and relevancy scores like Gooogle and Facebook have.

2. Relevancy targeting that actually works. If we ever reach a point where the native ads are supplemental content that add to the story you just finished reading, It will be a net positive.

If you are part of the world that believes all advertising is a nuisance and bad, no matter how relevant, than we do live in different universes, if not, than anytime an ad unit fits natively into an experience to the point of removing friction (and not requiring switching context) it will go through growing pains but eventually will be a net win for the user (because actually providing value to users will maximize revenues.)

It is surprising to me how little people seem to know about native/ content amplification ads.

Here is a brief primer: First, as far as quality goes, there are different networks with different quality policies. In general, Outbrain is very strict, Taboola is also, but less so, and RevContent, Content.ad, and the 50 or so other native networks (including mantis targeting marijuana publishers and jewish content network targeting orthodox jewish publishers), Like all channels, there are good actors and bad actors.

Native ads - defined as ,turning the atomic consumption unit into an ad unit, work really well because they dont require switching context. (i.e. adwords, Facebook newsfeed ads, indeed job postings, etc...)

These ads work really well when done properly. (High contrast images, compelling but very descriptive headline that qualifies the visitor, and constant freshness in both images and headlines... pointing to a high quality advertorial that presells a product or service, with links to purchase within the content and as banners on the side of the page.)

Any new channel that is very effective will attract affiliate marketers and some bad actors, but eventually, the networks police themselves, and they become very effective ad networks for everyone (i.e. Facebook newsfeed ads are basically as main stream now as Adwords is, but 5 years ago, it was full of shady affiliates. It still is, but much less so.)

In general, There are five types of native advertisers.

1. Advertising arbitrage sites - These are the the celebrity articles, etc... the folks who do this right are making bank, but for every person who succeeds at this, hundreds try and fail. It is a real skill. It also requires a large bankroll since you get paid net 30-45 for the ads you place.

2. Affiliate marketers primarily promoting info products and digital products - These are the health ads (i.e. secret fruit loses belly fat or nail fungus home remedy ads) and the software security ads. One thing you can be sure of... when it comes to rampant affiliate marketers, if it wasn't driving sales, they would move on to another channel.

3. Direct advertisers (most notably LendingClub & bankrate - I think)Don't be surprised to start seeing Proctor and Gamble to be running detergent native ads and typical Ecommerce sites running ads to their content.

4. Publishers growing their audience. - This is the most natural usage of native ads, but lends itself to arbitrage like the first type of advertiser. I worked with a few very large publishers buying ads on Taboola and Facebook news feed and arbitraging it by serving up Taboola native ads successfully.

5. Remarketing - These networks let you remarket you visitors and I think criteo (for sure some do) run remarketing through taboola, etc... You can also do it natively in the network by using their remarketing pixel.

If you do go this route, expect CPCs in the US on solid publishers to run you over $1.00 and smaller publishers in the $0.30-$0.60 range.

You can still get the junk traffic for about $0.10 a click, but not much cheaper.

All in All, I think native ads will find their place and be a net positive for the internet...but clearly we aren't there yet. One thing is for sure. Affiliate marketers who are spending $10-$20k/day on Native ads, are not losing money. It works and it works well... and not just for arbitrage or info products.

I've run successful Ecommerce product ads via native successfully.

Edit: Spelling

I heard about blendle, signed up for it....and than never used it!!!

As per my comment on this thread, I think the switching costs of finding other content to occupy my time is to low to cause me to even think about paying for actual content.

The more I think about services like this, the more I think everyone is thinking about this problem the wrong way.

People are thinking about the problem, as a)it costs money to produce great content, b) great content should be supported by people who enjoy that content, and c) ads and other current monetization efforts are annoying/bad/potentially dangerous for users.

So, the obvious solution, which from my perspective (has not and will not work at scale) is, "have people pay to block ads and give the money to publishers, or have publishers offer premium ad-free content.

The thing that all of these ideas are missing is the switching cost to find other interesting content is next to nothing.

There is already too much content bombarding us, and I have no problem reading someone elses content for free. Even if it means missing out on a headline that caught my attention. All I need to do is go back to my facebook newsfeed, or HN, and find 50 other articles I am interested in reading.

I do think there is a solution out there, but I don't think it will come from paying to block ads (which feels like an exortion racket) or paying for article you like.

As counter-intuitive as it sounds, I think a great solution for everyone involved would be to charge money to share the content. Charging for distribution and licensing content has always been a money maker for publishers, why not charge for social distribution.

My idea: Donate between $0.05 and $100 to share an article. Your post would say, "I just paid $1.25 to share this article, it's that good!"

This solves multiple problems. a)the quality of what gets shared will go up, which in turn would make the shares much more valuable in terms of building an engaged audience and your own social cred and validation that you are seeking when you share.

b)the amount you pay to share would reflect how much you liked the content. (i.e. an incredibly funny video that I want all my friends to see would be worth a few bucks to share, whereas a semi interesting one would be only $0.05...and in turn, my friends will learn to only watch my large donation shares... and the ratings of the content can be quantified by the audience. (i.e. this article generated $3450 in shares tells me much more than 34,500 people shared it.)

Making this frictionless would be difficult and getting publishers to risk their "virality" would be hard to sell...but, it's a crazy enough idea it just might work.

After all, the switching costs of not sharing an article you really want to share is much greater than paying to see content in the first place or paying a monthly fee when the problem is not gnawing at you in the moment.

Very True. I would add that conflicting priorities and/or conflicting preconceptions. In other words, conflicting priorities reflects bias in general, but cognitive bias could be independent of self interest priorities and simply be about a different preconceived perception, frame or foundation.

I once heard that our senses primarily function as filters. I.e. our eyes only see by filtering out all sorts of other visual stimuli, our ears hear by filtering out other noises, etc...

That means that we are only capturing a "tiny sliver" of whats actually happening around us.

If we only keep this small detail in mind we can be sure that lack of evidence is never proof of anything and that any evidence we do see can only be used to find the most probable of competing hypotheses and its diagnosticity should always be considered. (i.e. fever might mean you are sick but has no diagnostic value to what particular ailment you have since its consistent with other possibilities.)

Same goes for using bounce rate as a metric for web analysis...its diagnostic value on its own doesnt tell us much, but with other context, like time on site and conversion goal of site (i.e. a phone call conversion will register as a bounce if they dont navihate elsewhere.) It can tell us a lot.

I would agree. For me, the most important thing to know is that there are biases that could be impacting me and to always leave room for a) a competing viewpoint can be sincerely held and possibly correct over the viewpoint I am convinced of, and b) to always ask myself if there is a self interested reason I want the belief I hold to be true.

Many biases cannot be overcome even with knowing about them... but accepting that it's possible I'm wrong and that the crazy guy on the other side is both sincere in his competing belief and possibly correct, allows me to evolve and learn and ultimately get along with more people.

I have some strongly held beliefs and opinions...But I try to keep my mind open and without considering cognitive biases, you are going to be more close minded than you should be in most cases.

I did an analysis of the best deals in the early days of Groupon, and they were all classes that were better when attended with friends. (I think the best selling one in the early days was a cupcake baking class.)

I'm not sure this is true.

"Groupon keeps itself in cash by collecting money immediately when it sells its daily coupons to consumers while extending payments to the merchants over 60 days."

-http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240529702043580045770279...

Thanks for clarifying. I mistakenly assumed you were referring to "any non technical person with an idea (who can't build it himself),"

...as opposed to jerks who overvalue their contribution, thinking everyone else owes them something for just coming up with the idea.

In general, I think the bias flows both ways. Some developers think ideas are worthless and that idea guys/business and marketing folks contribution is somehow worth significantly less than a developers contribution. Other "idea guys" think their idea gives them the keys to the kingdom.

You really need both to succeed.

In reality, there are lots of ways for both sides to make significant contributions to bringing ideas to life, outside of writing the actual code or ideation.

It takes a village...

I think we were both coming from opposite perspectives, but share similar views. I was "lashing out" against the guys who undervalue business guy contributions, and you were against the guys who undervalue the developers contribution...

I just heard on a podcast that, "Every Mark Needs their Sheryl"

I disagree. His comment about "idea guys" is indicative of him saying "cops lives dont matter" not "black lives matter"

Had his comment not stuck in that tell, I would agree with you. But he certainly seems to be implying something more malicious than you noticed.

Shouldn't respect be a two way street? His comment implies it should be a one way, just the opposite way of this evil Kevin guy.

Edit: Just to be clear, I am drawing my assumption from the second part of his post that tries to correlate "idea guys" to "abusive people", almost as if he equates idea guys that try to hire developers as somehow "less than" him.

>do everything they can to make you feel small and worthless. It's utterly backwards.

Backwards? That's a bizarre word to use to describe behavior that is NEVER appropriate. Are you implying that the freelancers should be making the employers feel small and worthless?

> I wonder how many of these abusive people are "idea" guys?

Honestly, I have no idea what you mean by "idea guys" and the implied correlation to "abusive people"?

From reading your comment, it sounds like you missed the point completely. This is not a freelancer vs. employer or developer vs. idea guy situation, this is a simple case of narcissist vs. victim.

The situation can be reversed and be just as abusive and horrible.

An outside expert doing everything they can to make an "idea guy" feel small and worthless!

The point is not whether the employer has the right to push around the freelancer, or the respect you think an employer should have when needing outside expertise.

The point is everyone is a human being that deserves to be treated with respect. It is too easy to not consider the other person when working through a platform like Upwork or on the internet at large...This is a cautionary tale about the importance of remembering that there is a human being on the other side of the screen!

Am I the only one who thinks it's weird someone would hire a law firm to expunge a record and than publicly comment/review the service on Facebook? whats the point of wiping a record and than publicly sharing you had a record?

Increasing time value is hard when you do it arbitrarily...its easy when its based on opportunity cost.

In simpler terms, the best way to win a negotiation is to be willing to walk away from the project. As your opportunity cost grows, you are willing to walk away from higher and higher paying projects, which leads to better paying projects.

Dan Kennedy writes,"If you lose a client on price, you lost them long beforehand!"

Its really quite simple. As a seller, you want to frame your price in terms of value created. As a buyer, you want to frame the discussion around the cost to deliver the product or service.

Hourly pricing revolves around cost to deliver, not value created, so it's usually going to be better for the client and worse for the developer...

The only time this balance changes is when the developers opportunity cost nears the value created...so the hourly rate captures most of the value...

of course both sides can mitigate their risk by giving up this advantage. (i.e. if a developer charges hourly, they can make sure they dont end up under water on the project but in exvhange they wont capture the full value and vice versa.)

Maybe he is fighting the disgraceful shaming culture going on in this election.

By standing up and making a donation, he is forcing people to reconcile his success with his political views, creating real discourse, like this HN discussion.

I cant recall a single election that had so few lawn signs out and that people are afraid to admit who they truly support.

IMO it means you believe in a right freedom so long as you dont infringe on someone elses rights.

So, in theory you would be against forcing someone to pay taxes to build roads or provide education, but would arguably be for paying for a police department and justice system to protect people from having others infringe on their rights.

It basically means the only function of government should be to protect our freedoms and anything outside that purview should be done by the private sector and let the markets decide what has real value and is worth investing in.