Part of the problem is that it's nigh impossible to make money on simply providing useful information. People use ad blockers, they find ways around pay walls, they scoff at the idea that writing good information is real work worth actual money.
I've blogged for years. It doesn't make adequate income to support me. I get all kinds of flak from people who tell me to "get a real job" rather than helping me find some means to get traffic, develop a good niche and monetize it.
I also work for a writing service as a way to help pay my bills. I try to write stuff I can feel good about, but the reality is I am sometimes guilty* of adding to the kind of online "spam" that gets routinely decried as having ruined the internet.
I would prefer to be "part of the solution, not part of the problem." But it mostly doesn't pay to try to write high quality information with no pay wall, no product you are shilling, etc.
We have designed an internet where the only way to make money for the information you write is to be selling something else. And then we complain endlessly about the lack of quality information.
Pointing out the obvious connection between these various things mostly gets me grief. People want excellent information available online for free and they just refuse to see how and why that's a broken mental model.
If you want an internet where you can find good writing whose only goal is to provide good information for the reader without selling you something, then find some way to make it profitable and worthwhile for people to do that.
* To be clear, I don't feel guilty. I don't think it's morally wrong. I think what's morally wrong is the vast majority of people expecting excellent content to be completely free. That is a de facto expectation of slave labor from content producers.
In practical terms, we are incentivizing the creation of the kind of content that gets decried as low value "spam" and disincentiving the creation of independent, quality content.
"You get what you pay for." This is what pays. I've gotta eat.
"Part of the problem is that it's nigh impossible to make money on simply providing useful information"
I think again this is a Google problem - there is inherent value in 'good help' it should be profitable at some level, accepting the fact that there is a commodification to that as well.
I've blogged for years. It doesn't make adequate income to support me. I get all kinds of flak from people who tell me to "get a real job" rather than helping me find some means to get traffic, develop a good niche and monetize it.
I also work for a writing service as a way to help pay my bills. I try to write stuff I can feel good about, but the reality is I am sometimes guilty* of adding to the kind of online "spam" that gets routinely decried as having ruined the internet.
I would prefer to be "part of the solution, not part of the problem." But it mostly doesn't pay to try to write high quality information with no pay wall, no product you are shilling, etc.
We have designed an internet where the only way to make money for the information you write is to be selling something else. And then we complain endlessly about the lack of quality information.
Pointing out the obvious connection between these various things mostly gets me grief. People want excellent information available online for free and they just refuse to see how and why that's a broken mental model.
If you want an internet where you can find good writing whose only goal is to provide good information for the reader without selling you something, then find some way to make it profitable and worthwhile for people to do that.
* To be clear, I don't feel guilty. I don't think it's morally wrong. I think what's morally wrong is the vast majority of people expecting excellent content to be completely free. That is a de facto expectation of slave labor from content producers.
In practical terms, we are incentivizing the creation of the kind of content that gets decried as low value "spam" and disincentiving the creation of independent, quality content.
"You get what you pay for." This is what pays. I've gotta eat.
(shrug)