Thank goodness there was a podcast of the keynote with Dooce and Kottke. Listening today while things were slow at work kept me from taking a nap and helped me get a lot of tedious behind the scenes chores done (I added that part in case my boss is reading). It also gave me some time to ponder the two "business models" represented in the form of Dooce/advertising and Kottke/subscription.
I can see both sides of the coin. I’m a Libra and I can always see both sides of the coin so that makes it tough for me to sort out how I really feel about the revenue models in general and particularly related to the two bloggers in question.
Jason said he thought Heather would do well with a subscription model and I can totally see that. When he called her readers obsessed, he was right on target. But if Heather is troubled by the mail now, going to a subscription model would be even tougher. She’d have to pay Leta’s babysitter or Chuck to read the mail for her and pretend she doesn’t get any at all. On the otherhand, why bother with subscription? Ads on Dooce are working well, why fiddle with that? Who cares if some dummies want to gripe about the ads, they can read the blog in an aggregator and never see the things if they are troubled.
When Heather said that Jason would do well with ADs, I think she was on target too. I would never pay for a subscription to Kottke. I don’t even read his blog on a regular basis (though everyone is right, he is a great link blogger). I do visit him several times a week, usually because someone else has linked his blog. I understand that he doesn’t really like advertising but there are an awful lot of ad models out there that will allow you to choose your advertising. It could work.
The part of the podcast I liked the most was when Dooce told Jason that she was troubled when he said his "experiment" didn’t work. As a financial supporter, I can totally understand why she’d feel that way. It bugged me that he said that, and I didn’t send him money. I mean what DID he expect? He got his readers to pay his salary for a year. He even got to go on vacation (which I personally think was fine and wouldn’t have knocked him if I’d been one of his financial supporters). What more did he want? People to just send him more money out of the blue, for no good reason? To be a keynote speaker at sxswi with Dooce – oh wait, he got that and still he’s saying his experiment wasn’t a success. Dude, come up with a better way to explain how you felt about your year of blogging on someone else’s dollar. Calling it "not a success" stinks.
Now, on a personal level, the panel with Dooce and Kottke didn’t make even a wee bit of difference in my blog life or in my work life. Unless I get Dooced (waving to my boss just in case) I’m not going to be trying to make a living from my blog. The ads on my blog are there as an experiment (some of you may have noticed I have blogs on almost every available blogging/journaling platform, or have at one time. It’s all an experiment, including various types of advertising that I’ve put up and pulled down). I’m not expecting TW to quit her job and stay home and change diapers while I eat bon-bons in the basement like Dooce. From where I was sitting while listening to Heather and Jason, it was just fun to listen to the exchange and ponder the worlds in which they live and blog. But, if I ever stumble upon a cool dog like Chuck, then I might have to reconsider this whole making a living from blogging thing. Chuck is what clinched it for Heather. I’m not sure what Kottke has that keeps people coming – oh yea, the links, he gives good links.
Technorati Tags: blogging, advertising, subscription, kottke, dooce, sxswi,
It really is all about Chuck. I secretly wanted the Chuck calendar.
I have a cool dog (at least, she is to me) and still don’t plan to stay home and blog.
On the other hand, if some techie toy companies wanted a girl geek to play with and review their products, I’d do it for free as long as they let me keep the ones I liked. 😉
That’s a different model completely. I’ll think about that another day.
Your dog is a pug, and while cute to pug lovers, she is not really all that awesome to the rest of us and certainly not on Chuck’s level. Now if you could teacher to talk back to the boss rather than bark during telephone conference calls, I’d reconsider my position. 😉