How Google Adsense kills writers
January 22, 2008 | 7:55 am
I just found a new site called The Best Article Every Day which is kind of cool but also kind of unnerving.
The site’s administrator mixes it up — everything from Top 10 Life Lessons I’ve Learned From My Daughter to If College-Themed Porn Were Real. The idea is pretty obvious — post a whole bunch of content to attract a wide range of visitors who will click on the Google ads plastered all over the site.
It gets unnerving because here is someone making money off the words and ideas of others. Which is pretty much the basis of any for-profit blog, but this one is interesting because there is no original content — just a couple of minutes spent each day cutting and pasting. It’s a little unsettling for those of us who write for a living to know that content is so easily recycled without compensation to the original offer or the publication that owns the piece.
I’ve been experimenting with some ideas on how to eliminate the middle man (i.e. magazines, book publishers, etc.) but the catch is, at least for now, we still need those entities to promote our work and make it profitable. If I were to post Google ads on this site I could reasonably expect to make about $2-$3 per month, based on my current traffic. If I were to start charging a modest fee to read what is posted here, say $1 a month, I’d lose readers.
The ulterior motive of this blog has always been self promotion, and while the economic benefit is harder to measure, I believe its worthwhile to keep it both free. But if sites start lifting, say, the magazine articles I write, and ultimately force those magazines out of business or to cut my rates, it gets scary.
The problem is, there’s no simple solution. Writing is just turning into a shitty game where freelance rates have been frozen for 40 years, book contracts get sucked up by big names and staff writers for newspapers and magazines are increasingly called on to do more with fewer resources.
Tags: Blogging, Internet, Writing