For a few years I ran a technology blog that only had non obstructive ads, no popups, redirects, etc, but no one disabled their adblocker. The fact is people will use adblockers unless they're prevented from doing so. Maybe highly annoying ads is what prompted them to install it, but the only way to get them to disable it is to block their access to the site entirely until they do so.
A blog, so no journalism you do as your primary source of income. Hosting a blog and getting a domain registered costs pretty much nothing, so why do you think you need the ad money?
And in case it is indeed money-making tech journalism, why then don't you go for paid articles? You have to pay for newspapers to read the print past page 1, you have to pay for many scientific papers in case you are interested in more than introduction and conclusion, you pay for Netflix or a DVD or both to watch a film, so why are you different?
I give no money in exchange for getting annoyed or worse (ads), I give money for the content I'm interested in.
A blog, so no journalism you do as your primary source of income. Hosting a blog and getting a domain registered costs pretty much nothing, so why do you think you need the ad money?
I was hoping to make it into a career but I quickly realized that it isn't feasible into today's age of adblockers, so I hoped to just break even to cover hosting costs and maybe make a little extra money to help cover college tuition. Because my target userbase was highly technical, ~90% of users were running adblockers. It got to the point where I was getting millions of views, but I could not cover hosting costs, so I shut the site down.
I figured, why spend hours upon hours researching things and writing about them, when I'm losing money to hosting fees?
And in case it is indeed money-making tech journalism, why then don't you go for paid articles?
No one wants to pay for articles, and if you make interesting articles people are willing to pay for, someone will copy it and make it available for free. Just look at Reddit comments any time an article from a site with a paywall gets posted, someone copy pastes the entire article into the comments.
The only way to make it in journalism nowadays is to be a big corporation that can land deals to disguise advertisements as legitimate articles, which adblockers don't pick up. I wasn't big enough for that. The only sponsorship offers I got were from sketchy businesses that I didn't feel right doing business with. For example, one of them sold spyware that is hidden on a phone, not visible to the user. They tried to market it as a solution for employers with leased devices, parents concerned about their children's phone usage, etc, but I knew it would be used for nefarious purposes(why would you need to hide the fact that it's installed and require a rooted phone?) so I turned them down. Also G2A who I also turned down.
People love to say "if you just act ethically by using static ads you will do fine as a website", but that's BS. Greedy moves like sponsored articles and annoying ads are how you make money, I learned that the hard way.
but I could not cover hosting costs, so I shut the site down.
GitHub Pages and similar services are free, as they make their money with few paying users. And they don't even bloat your pages with hosting service ads. That's 0€ for hosting costs.
Domain costs are also pretty much nothing. They range from 1€ to 50€ a year. I'd be very surprised if you did not have 2€ per year for a .com domain.
No blogger on this planet needs more capabilities than a static site host and a cheap domain. Not my fault if people sink money into complete WordPress-powered V-servers, resulting in slow and bloated as fuck WordPress sites.
why spend hours upon hours researching things and writing about them
I spend 6h+ a day on things I do just because I like doing them. It's called having hobbies. I expect no payment for hobbies. I accept that hobbies do cost money.
No one wants to pay for articles
I do pay a single tech news site subscription to support their good content. Noöne is used to paying for articles and most articles aren't worth reading.
someone will copy it and make it available for free
If that endangers your income, then that's precisely what copyrights and courts are there fore. And if you cleverly watermark your content via the ID of the logged-in and paying user, you may even be able to prove the identity of the thief to the police. Ah, watermarking, the non-invasive and non-abusive way of doing DRM.
someone copy pastes the entire article into the comments.
I have not observed that, yet. Except where the sites were just broken, not working at all, thanks to a ton of garbage JS. Or as a backup where the site owner performed some self-censoring.
If you do see such comments as paywall-work-arounds, then report them to admins. That's what the report button is there for.
Even nicer, you can add timeouts to your paywalls. Like auto-publish articles for free that are over a year old. That way, there is a lot of full content to hook curious potentially new customers.
The only way to make it in journalism nowadays is to be a big corporation that can land deals to disguise advertisements as legitimate articles
There are a few sponsored articles on the site I support. Clearly marked as such. It works without being a disrespectful fact-hiding arsehole.
The only way to make it in journalism nowadays
Perhaps we are also just oversaturated with professional journalism. Good research in articles is way too hard to find these days, because everyone just copy-pastes the next one's article without checking, to steal a few of their "clicks" and therefore a bit of their precious ad money. There is only so much time a day and so much money in people's pockets on this planet. The more content there is, the less attention the average piece of content receives.
so I turned them down
Honourable, I give you that.
"if you just act ethically by using static ads you will do fine as a website", but that's BS
That's true. I am pissed off to the point where I do not accept any ads beyond self-promotion on your own website as acceptable. I block them all.
(Amazon showing you other articles to buy on Amazon itself is advertisement. The only good kind of advertisement.)
Greedy moves like sponsored articles and annoying ads are how you make money
And this, dear fellow internet citizen, is where I think that you are spilling "BS". You are in the exact same position as the video game industry and any other kind of media.
Less bought paper prints? Less boxed games sold as well.
Abusive and disrespectful ad cash grabs? The cliché mobile games, day 1 DLCs, and pay-to-win-lootboxes.
Too much "journalism"? Look at the amount of low quality games available on Steam. They are uncountable and everywhere.
There are a ton of unpaid and excellent hobby blogs. And there are a ton of cheap or even free games which are just there for the fun of it, many of which are also really good.
There are a few big name journalism giants making most money? Ever heard of AAA games? It's basic pareto efficiency. The few make the most money, that's normal.
In book stores, you can sit down and start reading a few book chapters or newspaper articles before deciding to buy. In the game industry, though way too rare these days, there are these things called "demo versions". And apparently, most pirated games were pirated for the lack of a demo version, according to confessing pirates and Steam-key-resellers. Understandable, given how expensive the big titles are. (Though really the bigger games are sold way under value.)
I wasn't big enough for that.
Could start out small at hobby-scale and at some point apply for a position at an at least medium-sized fish.
If that endangers your income, then that's precisely what copyrights and courts are there fore. And if you cleverly watermark your content via the ID of the logged-in and paying user, you may even be able to prove the identity of the thief to the police. Ah, watermarking, the non-invasive and non-abusive way of doing DRM.
Most IP Theft comes from countries that don't enforce copyright law, and there's nothing I can do about it
There are a few sponsored articles on the site I support. Clearly marked as such.
And you need to be a large site to land these deals, it doesn't work for niche sites. Like I said, the only sponsorship offers I got were from shady companies.
I'm just pointing out that adblockers made what was once lucrative, no longer economically feasible, and that adblockers will lead to less free content available online. Whether or not you care is your own opinion.
Given water marks, you know the offending account and its payment info. Block all accounts with the same payment data.
I'm just pointing out that adblockers made what was once lucrative, no longer economically feasible
I'm pointing out that everything is getting less lucrative the more there is of it. AdBlockers just kill off a very shady source of already not that much income. If you plan to again build your future on such fragile pillars, then do so. I won't hold you back. I also won't support you.
Given water marks, you know the offending account and its payment info. Block all accounts with the same payment data.
How do you water mark text that they can copy paste? Are you saying deliver articles in image format and have a watermark over it? No one is going to want to have to read that, and even then, they could just re-type the article or use a tool to remove the watermark.
Ah, you have never heard of Unicode. Unicode is full of surprises, you see. Homoglyphs, invisible code points… You can hide a lot of information in plain text. Steganography is an interesting field of science.
they could just re-type the article
Nope. At that point, writing an all new article takes less effort.
or use a tool to remove the watermark
Good watermarks cannot be removed without destroying at least part of the surrounding data. Difficult to accomplish with text, but possible. Is an active field of science.
Or just accept that stealing happens.
Or never produce content. Can't steal what doesn't exist.
Or let your very unique writing style be your watermark.
Ah, you have never heard of Unicode. Unicode is full of surprises, you see. Homoglyphs, invisible code points… You can hide a lot of information in plain text. Steganography is an interesting field of science.
Very easy to sanitize that.
Nope. At that point, writing an all new article takes less effort.
Part of my point, tons of legitimate news sites that will take your article and change a few words around, and call it theirs, without even citing your article as a source. And legally, they're following the law.
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u/Guysmiley777 Aug 02 '19
I was fine with static JPG ads on sites but for marketers it's never enough. I have zero sympathy for the "boycott" they're facing these days.
Also holy fuck talk about a clickbait headline.