DISQUS

Mark Dykeman · 1 year ago

Blog feeds are a commodity that happen to have a retail price of $0.00.

It seems like Allen Stern is looking for something with the ease and convenience of an RSS feed that people would be willing to pay for. Thing is, and I mean no disrespect to you, Mathew, but as you've indicated above, the value proposition might not be there for someone to pay for blog content on a subscription basis. Your blog does serve to:

a) provide you with a continual online presence
b) draw people's attention to things that you find interesting
c) provide some education
d) provide you with a promotional platform, if you choose to use it that way

Rex Hammock says it quite eloquently, doesn't he?

Matthew, a question: do you feel like you are "locked in" to blogging? In other words, do you feel that giving up a blog would actually hurt you as a professional and, to be blunt, as a product?

Another piece of data in my ongoing quest to come up with a new model to monetize content. I'm really enjoying your writing.

mathewi · 1 year ago

No Mark, I don't feel "locked in" to a blog. There are lots of other ways I
could promote myself, some of which might be even more effective. But I
think blogging is one of the easiest, cheapest and most rewarding methods,
and I really enjoy doing it. In fact, I do it as much for my own purposes
-- as a way of thinking things through and drawing comment from others -- as
I do for any other reason.

Mark Evans · 1 year ago

I think what Allen is really driving at is the rise of RSS means fewer people actually visit blog sites, which hurts a blogger's ability to make money. I wrote about it a couple months ago:

http://www.markevanstech.com/2007/11/26/what-if...

mathewi · 1 year ago

Yeah, I know -- which is why I was suggesting that bloggers have to look at
other ways to make money that are offshoots of their blogs. Think of your
blog as advertising, not as a place for advertising. I don't think making
money from a blog (or at least any kind of substantial amount of money) is a
realistic proposition, really, except in maybe a handful of exceptional
cases.

jules · 1 year ago

I wonder if I'm understanding this right - paying for RSS feeds or going right to the website directly? I'm a bad blog reader I keep all the cool stuff in iGoogle - and there are about 2 dozen sites that, if I like what I see in the rss reader bit, I open the entire blog in a new tab, because I don't want to miss anything! I use my rss reader as a bookmark ;-)

I'd rather pay for blog access to someone i'm interested in, rather than just the rss feed ;-)

Adam_Y · 1 year ago

"it’s hard to monetize a blog if no one ever comes to the website and looks at the feeds"

Read: It's hard to make money from trying to sell something that no one wants.

Simple economics... make good things, get readers, make money... not the other way round