Allen Stern recently posted on his blog, “Do You Compensate Content Creators?”
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Stern is referring to actively clicking advertisements to show support for the author. He has a noble argument. I occasionally will click a banner ad, but not as often I should be doing. Being a webmaster for so many years, has lead me to become oblivious to advertisements. Stern states he does not feel compensating authors via clicking an advertisement is the same as compensating by sharing or promoting an authors content. I feel he is wrong. By actively promoting an authors content, using any of the methods I listed below, is in effect driving more traffic to the site, which in turns leads to more potential banner clicks.
Would you rather have a few non converting, junk webmaster clicks (i.e sympathy clicks) sent to an advertiser, or fresh clicks that have the potential of converting into a sale?
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Webmasters clicking a banner is fine for showing support, but if the click does not convert, what has it really accomplished. Most advertisers are looking for conversions.
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Here are a few alternatives to clicking on a banner. These alternatives show support for the content creator and bring traffic, which if executed correctly with the right advertising, should convert. Conversions are a numbers game. Most of these methods send traffic directly to the creators website, as opposed to an rss feed.
Social Bookmarking/Voting:
This perhaps is the most easiest way to show support for a content author. The concept of social bookmarking is to provide a repository in which users can organize and display their bookmarks. Most of these repositories are open, and are used to find new and interesting content. Social bookmarking sites have a tremendous readership and can equate to a tremendous amount of traffic. I mention Toluu because it is becoming a new tool in my arsenal for discovery and promotion. Simply put, show support for an author by adding their feed into the Toluu database.
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- Digg
- Del.icio.us
- Diigo
- Magnolia
- Mixx
- StumbleUpon
- Toluu
Social Content Aggregators:
Social content aggregators are becoming a new source of traffic. A multitude of methods can be used to get the word out on these sites. The most common methods that I have seen on FriendFeed, are posting content directly to the site, and sharing content via Google reader. The added bonus to these sites, more specifically Friendfeed is the FOAF feature.
- FriendFeed
Social Networking sites:
- Myspace
Broadcasting/Micro blogging:
Broadcasting using any micro-blogging service such as Twitter is great for getting the word out quickly. It’s fast, and will definitely send some traffic. This could be very beneficial if you have a large enough legion of followers following you. If you write a personal or professional blog, always link back to the source somewhere on your posts. This gives credit where credit is due, but it also gives the content creator valuable search engine linkage and validity.
- Blogs
- Email (opt in newsletter)
- Identi.ca
- FriendFeed
Commenting:
Post in multiple places. Consider only posting on blogs that use commenting systems like IntenseDebate and Disqus. These services offer more exposure. They add threaded conversations and community features.
- Forums
- Disqus
- Intensedebate
Content Sharing:
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One common and very powerful way to show support for the author, is to share their content. The heavy weight that accomplishes this is Google reader. Google reader makes it easy to share content and even gives you a public webpage to display your shared items. Linkriver allows you to add content from an existing RSS/ATOM feed. You also can import a link feed (del.icio.us account, Google Reader shared items, etc.)
- Google reader
- Linkriver
- RSSmeme
Word of mouth offline via keywords
As quoted from Benedikt on FriendFeed:
” Don’t forget offline promotion. Many people who are now regular readers and commenters of my blog came to my site because I told them the URL or keywords to Google for.”
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In conclusion their are many was to show support. Do your part.
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13 Responses to Compensation for content creators
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Commenting on posts is my way of compensating content creators.
As far as clicking on ads, that's not always the best way – for example, some of my ads are not performance based but rather are a flat monthly rate.
I think Allen would disagree with you and say that you need to directly monetize your appreciation. For the record, I don't agree with him 100% on that.
imagine it is five years from now, isp's charging by the gb, a ton of streaming stuff, online advertising has marginal returns, maybe 300 million blogs, still the same 24 hours in the day …
what do you think will be the appropriate compensation technique? …
microsubscriptions? i would happily put a hundred dollars a month into a pot, and have it dispersed to every blog i spent more than five minutes on in that month .. ten thousand people giving me a penny every month at least pays for my habit…
Commenting on posts is my way of compensating content creators.
As far as clicking on ads, that’s not always the best way – for example, some of my ads are not performance based but rather are a flat monthly rate.
Brand advertisers are looking for scale and engagement, these are the guys who pay the big bucks. So increasing your scale, getting more visitors and readers, is an important part of the equation. Spreading the word about your favorite blogs is a very powerful way to expand a particular blogs audience and, in turn, increase the potential value to advertisers.
Clicking on ads for the sake of clicking ads doesn't help anyone. Only click on ads you're actually interested in.
I think Allen would disagree with you and say that you need to directly monetize your appreciation. For the record, I don’t agree with him 100% on that.
imagine it is five years from now, isp’s charging by the gb, a ton of streaming stuff, online advertising has marginal returns, maybe 300 million blogs, still the same 24 hours in the day …
what do you think will be the appropriate compensation technique? …
microsubscriptions? i would happily put a hundred dollars a month into a pot, and have it dispersed to every blog i spent more than five minutes on in that month .. ten thousand people giving me a penny every month at least pays for my habit…
Brand advertisers are looking for scale and engagement, these are the guys who pay the big bucks. So increasing your scale, getting more visitors and readers, is an important part of the equation. Spreading the word about your favorite blogs is a very powerful way to expand a particular blogs audience and, in turn, increase the potential value to advertisers.
Clicking on ads for the sake of clicking ads doesn’t help anyone. Only click on ads you’re actually interested in.
Although the thought is appreciated(thanx Stern) I really value comments more than ad clicks. That's why I dropped google ads and moved to sponsored ads paying per impression. Subscribe to me if you find me relevant, don't throw pennies…
Although the thought is appreciated(thanx Stern) I really value comments more than ad clicks. That’s why I dropped google ads and moved to sponsored ads paying per impression. Subscribe to me if you find me relevant, don’t throw pennies…
Even if you have a $0 budget you can find people to work for you through high school and foreign student internship programs. Once you have a budget, you can bring people on board for as little as one hour a day (what I first did) and then increase their hours when you can afford it. You need to be spending your time working on the business and not in the business.