Things to Avoid - Over Monetization
I am excited to announce that from next week, Ronald, myself and Simonne have decided to turn this site into a Pay Per View Blog. The next time you type in www.raproject.com into your browser, you will be taken to our payment page where you will be required to pay only $14.99 a month, either through credit card or Paypal, in order to view our website. If you do not pay, you will be blocked from this site.
Imagine if the above were true. Would you go to any site that did not even show you a preview or a general idea of what it offered until you paid for it? We are slowly moving towards such a blogosphere, where many bloggers are simply starting to focus on appreciating and taking care of money while completely ignoring their readers. For such bloggers, readers can be mindless drones who are either too dumb to pay money to do basic things, or too dumb to have enough money and thus can be ignored. You can decide yourself what kind of a dumb reader you are. There is nothing wrong with making money while providing useful content to readers, but there is something wrong with making money while providing an illusion of useful content to others.
Over-Monetization Is Harmful in 5 Ways
Here is a short list of things that many bloggers are monetizing, or thinking of monetizing, even though their blogs do not have anything useful to offer to people who are not willing to spend the money.
- Comments do not matter - the money from the commentor does:
Ronald recently talked about not caring about innocent commentors. Slowly, bloggers are starting to abuse the money-making principle by letting the quality of the comments go down the drain. More and more people are going to focus on buying links on blogger’s sites instead of leaving useful comments. On such blogs, the text “Leave a comment below” should be changed to “Buy a comment link below.“
- Reading experience becomes intrusive due to ads
Many bloggers are plastering ads all over their websites. I know of at least 7 blogs that have a page full of ads, and even the logo and the navigation system on those blogs start on the 2nd page, after you have scrolled down from the ads. I am not sure if bloggers simply want to annoy readers who come to sites to read anything other than ads, or if bloggers are competing for the “Worst ways to make money while annoying readers, yet still making money!” awards.
- Interaction with the blogger becomes a feeling of inferiority
I was talking to someone on the phone recently, and they told me they will stop contacting John Chow with tips and suggestions because his writing and attitude prefers commentors with money and not commentors who have good ideas and good skills to exercise those ideas. The internet could have been used to promote a feeling of equality on many levels among different people. Unfortunately, due to many things including money, many bloggers and commentors are already feeling inferior because they focus on quality instead of their money to get themselves ahead and heard.
- The rich push the rich-poor system onto the internet
Those with money will be able to benefit by having their comments linked by more search engines, whereas the poor will either have to see webpages with full ads or find websites which do not require payments in order to be seen. The rich will keep getting richer, whereas the poor will not even be able to find any useful information on many blogs. They will simply have to go to Wikipedia or Reader Appreciation Project for free information for now.
- Quality content becomes harder to find for most people
It is funny that the focus of bloggers who are trying to monetize every possible channel of content and income have not improved their blogs. They have only improved their celebrity status, and not what they are able to do or offer to themselves and others. It’s like me running a cheese shop; I keep selling the same kinds of cheese to shoppers, but soon, as I get more customers, I start hiding cheese under blue bags. I start a program “Preview cheese before buying! Pay $25 and be able to lift the blue bag from any cheese product! Actual purchase of cheese costs extra!” Would you still buy cheese from me? I sure hope so!
What do you think? Actually, it wouldn’t be a bad idea for me to charge you to let me know what you think, and for you to charge me to let me know what you think.
Patrick Lee says...
Amen to everything you wrote. I’m really getting tired of blogs with gratuitous AdSense blocks everywhere. I just want to monetize my blog enough to cover the time I spend working on it. The real value of blogging for me is relationship building and creating a community, not making money hand over fist. And don’t get me started on all the money-making blogs about nothing more than making money with blogs. Ugh.
Bes says...
Thanks for the comment Patrick. I also feel a bit more-than-usual-tense-feeling when running into websites covered with ads, as it can become hard and it is usually hard to focus only on the content. Even if monetization was being done to make a lot of money and excess of profit, it should not intrude into people’s normal behavior, where many people who cannot afford money become inconvenienced because their privileges are taken away, unless they pay.
Yes, blogs that make money by talking about how they make money and showing ads and other things go in circles, and so far, I have yet to find one that is useful and loyal to readers in the long run. Thanks again Patrick! That was a nice comment.
LGR says...
While I agree that people can over due the ads and making money from blogs. Certainly there are some A List bloggers that tend to focus on only making money, review posts and bragging about how much money they make.
However, I disagree somewhat with your opening paragraph. In some ways the subscription for content has worked for a long time for magazines and newspapers and I have seen that model work for blogs. Granted you still need to give people some content to get them to subscribe, but the subscription model is not about sucking every last penny out of your users. It is actually about providing quality content to your users while not having to worry about how the blogger is not going to pay their bills.
Patrick Lee says...
@LGR: I’m going to have to disagree with you about magazine and newspaper subscriptions. While there are some magazines like the Economist in which you’re actually paying for the content (because it’s that good), most magazines and all newspapers that I know of use subscription fees to cover printing and distribution costs. The writers, editors, photographers, etc. are all paid through advertising revenue. I work at a newspaper so I’m not just speculating about this.
So online-only models like blogs should be able to use ads to generate revenue. I don’t think any of us have a problem with that. Where we draw the line is the gratuitous use of ads to the point where it’s difficult if not impossible to focus on the content.
If you can create online content that people are willing to pay for, then more power to you. But 99% of bloggers making money are doing so through ads and many have just gone too far with it.
LGR says...
Patrick, I am not sure what you are disagreeing about. I have no problem with blogs using ads to help cover costs, but some blogs over due it. If a blog was able to move to a subscription based model, since the costs of running a blog in theory should be considerably cheaper than print, they probably could remove ads. I have a client that does exactly this. She runs a law blog and while she has ads on the free articles and previews, there are no ads on the paid content.
Patrick Lee says...
I was just disagreeing with you about magazine and newspaper subscriptions. That revenue typically just covers production and distribution, so I wouldn’t consider it a “subscription for content” since most newspapers give their content away free on the Web. The publications don’t make any money directly from having more subscribers. The profit comes from advertising (and of course advertisers like to see subscriber bases growing).
Since blogs have no production or distribution to worry about, it usually wouldn’t make sense for them to charge subscription fees. So most of them just use ads. However, the example you just gave of your client’s law blog is a worthwhile two-tier model: free ad-supported or paid ad-free. I think we’ll see more of that in the future in certain niche markets.
MT says...
For me, this post speaks to the heart of the Reader Appreciation Project. So many bloggers have caught the “gotta make money!” bug, and forgotten that they have an audience of readers — they write for an audience of clickthrough generators.
Actually, some may *not* have an reader audience anymore, and maybe they don’t care.
They’re happy with a circle of other bloggers who are engaged in exchanging comments, page impressions, links and clickthroughs, each more interested in their own advancement than anyone’s content. They feed on each other, I suppose — and I find that I can identify and ignore them the way I do link-farms. I expect that Google and advertisers will start ignoring them, too.
It’s sad when otherwise solid bloggers seem to catch ad-fever. When it happens, my visits slow and finally halt. Most annoying to me are those attention demanding “Be Reviewed By Me for $450″ sidebar ads. I’d rather see people be professional, treat blogging like a legit publishing model, and put information for potential advertisers on a separate page. Seems to me that’s an model that’s more likely to survive the inevitable Blogosphere Web2.0 bust, too.
Wow. I had no idea I was annoyed enough by this stuff to rant in a comments section!
Bes says...
LGR, thanks for the comment. That is a good point. However, newspapers and magazines provide something useful, but the blogs in question and the blogs I was implying currently do not offer anything useful that is concrete; they offer an illusion of something useful. You are right about the subscription model. However, the way it is shaping and already being used, it is more beneficial to the people who charge money instead of people who pay.
Patrick, thanks for the comment also. Magazines like Economist or others that do provide something useful to some people are providing a useful service. However, currently, many if not most blogs are only talking about providing something useful, while they are actually implementing ways to charge people.
MT, thanks for the nice words and the comment. The “I wanna make money” scheme is changing the focus of many bloggers. I like your idea of feeding on each other, which is what many bloggers are doing to their readers.
Personally, the current “Reviewed by Me” is similar to paid advertisements, since even talking about something negative, when the advertisor has paid you directly, does not ensure that a paid post is not a clever advertisement. You are basically being paid to write about a product, and that is advertising the product.
Your model is indeed something that can survive bursts and busts, and more people should know about it!
Thanks for commenting. Nice, isn’t it?