<![CDATA[raving lunacy: RSS Advertising:
RSS advertising is every bit as filthy a practice as spyware, viruses, trojan horses, pop ups, and rich media Insertion.
Having advertising on your blogs, being a fully disclosed blogger for dollars, being an amazon affiliate are all good.
Shoving shit into my news reader is not.
The Head Lemur makes his feelings known. I don’t agree, because I think we are inserting ads in RSS when we link to Marqui in text, but I am sure as hell not going to ignore these strong feelings if I consider added some form of advertising to my RSS feeds, where more than half my readership is already and seems to be headed. So, the question is, what do we do to earn something from that part of the readership?]]>
4 replies on “Lemur bites RSS ads”
Don’t do it.
Webblogs allow you to customize the amount of material that is sent out as a feed, which can sharpen one’s writing skills, either by headline alone, that outstanding first paragraph, or in the case of some folks the entire posting.
This should be used as the primary hook to get folks to your site where you now have the opportunity to lasso them with the product/service of the week.
While it is true that using a news reader does to a certain degree limit the visits to our blogs, and exposure to whatever we are doing to make our work revenue neutral or as a cash cow of unprecedented proportions, adding advertisements into RSS feeds is where I draw the line, build the gated community, and will not play.
It has always been my goal to work in my bathrobe and cash checks, which is one of the reasons for blogging for Marqui, am ‘opposed beyond reason’ sort of like the Lovemarks nonsense, on this issue.
The earning question is one that we are all wrestling with. Nick Denton and Jason Calacanis would have us believe that weblogs are ONLY vehicles for Advertisers. A notion that is patently false on the basis of sheer numbers.
The blogging for dollars situation vis a vis Marqui while interesting, will probably not be sustainable in the long term, as it created a quite a bit of buzz, a few bucks for us, and hopefully some significant revenue for those folks, will probably not have legs as it was new fresh and different once, but is one of those one off deals like the punch the monkey banners of a few years ago. It’s cool once and fishwrap the second time around.
Using advertising in RSS neews feeds will destroy their utility as sure as usenet was destroyed by self promotional postings.
I don’t know what the solution to making money with our blogs is, but I do know that ads in news feeds is not.
I hear you and acknowledge what you are saying, especially the part about there being more than one way to skin this cat….
Dunno what the big answer is, but I am sure there’s not just one. Question is, can links in RSS (like Amazon affiliate links to books discussed, cover the growing cost of publishing this way? I don’t think so.)
Maybe what we need is a great confabulation of discussion about this topic. My dad has a barn and I know your dad has a trunk full of costumes from his days with the circus….
> “So, the question is, what do we do to earn something from that part of the readership?”
why _should_ a blogger “earn something” from his readership …?
to me it is already annoying engough that so many people use google ads, click traders or whatever on their little personal website.
why the heck do so many people seem to think, that they should “earn something” for publishing their thoughts on the net? why can’t people just do it for the “enthusiasm” of having the ability to provide the rest of the world with their own piece of the great puzzle “www”?
ain’t it worth to be part of the net any more if it does not “earn” you something equivalent to money …?
Enthusiasm doesn’t pay for increasing the time and effort put into producing writing, art, music, movies and all the other things we could contribute if there were solid economic systems for this environment. Every society has an economy.