Year: 2012

Ben Brooks:

I’d argue it’s not working at all, as evidenced by the race to the bottom nature of advertising revenues, the exploration of pay-wall systems in big publishers to help pad advertising revenue (because ad revenue isn’t enough), the fact that more than a few blogs I know need the extra money from members to make writing work full-time, and the overall on-the-verge-of-bankruptcy nature of most news publications.

No, I don’t think advertising works any longer as the sole revenue stream.

I didn’t mean to suggest that advertising worked as a sole revenue stream. Here’s what I wrote:

Even in their glory days, newspapers were chock-full of ads to help cover the costs of writing, editing, printing and distributing the paper everyday. Selling the paper wasn’t enough to cover the costs of getting it out the door each night.

Advertising works best in conjunction with other revenue streams. Most newspapers and magazines aren’t free with ads — there’s a newsstand price and you see ads.

I think what Ben is getting at is not that the Internet should be that way too, but that we should go one step father — offer no ads, and just charge people for content.

The mixed model newspapers and magazines have used for decades isn’t going anywhere. It even works online, in some regards. Writers with large enough sites with ads, RSS sponsors and membership drives seem to make enough to go full-time.

That said, paywalls don’t seem to be the way to go at all. I don’t think that’s the answer.

The question here is what’s sustainable and what’s not. Ben doesn’t think writing supported by only ads will continue to be possible in the future. He’s probably right.

Ben Brooks:

Ads are likely not the future, or the answer, because as readers we have many, many, tools that allow us to ignore, gloss over, or outright remove ads from content. Even if an advertiser still registers a page view on their ad, when they stop seeing returns on their advertisements they will no longer desire to pay publishers. This is where the market is beginning to head — the race to the bottom.

[…]

I could sit here all day and talk about why I think the current model is broken, but that solves nothing. I personally only see one way forward: asking readers to support you.

It’s the direct model, it’s old-fashioned, but it works. If blogs are no longer driven by page views, then we — as a whole — get better content, content we as readers deserve.

Journalism has long been paid for by advertising.

Even in their glory days, newspapers were chock-full of ads to help cover the costs of writing, editing, printing and distributing the paper everyday. Selling the paper wasn’t enough to cover the costs of getting it out the door each night.

Magazines are no different. Even digital copies of magazines are stuffed with ads.

Ben’s desire to move away from this model isn’t new. Just look at newspapers — many of them have launched paywalls to try to separate their well-being from online ads, and for the most part, it hasn’t worked.

Here’s the problem: the number of people willing to pay for content isn’t big enough to offset the smaller number of ad impressions.

When it comes to us independent guys, I don’t think it’s different. I don’t think readers — on the whole — want to pay writers directly. Sure, some have successful membership drives, but I think most casual readers would rather see an ad than Paypal someone $3/month.

For example, if something I write ends up on Daring Fireball, Hacker News or the front page of Reddit, I see a spike of traffic, and with it, a spike in ad impressions. This helps offset the increased bandwidth I have to shell out thanks to the increased load on the site. However, I don’t see a jump in membership after the fact. Income based on ads helps smooth things out.

Advertising-supported writing might leave a bad taste in some people’s mouths, but it’s been this way for a long time for a reason — because it works.