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Compensation for content creators

24th July
2008
written by Mike Fruchter
Allen Stern recently posted on his blog, “Do You Compensate Content Creators?”
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Stern is referring to actively clicking advertisements to show support for the author. He has a noble argument. I occasionally will click a banner ad, but not as often I should be doing. Being a webmaster for so many years, has lead me to become oblivious to advertisements. Stern states he does not feel compensating authors via clicking an advertisement is the same as compensating by sharing or promoting an authors content. I feel he is wrong. By actively promoting an authors content, using any of the methods I listed below, is in effect driving more traffic to the site, which in turns leads to more potential banner clicks.

Would you rather have a few non converting,  junk webmaster clicks (i.e sympathy clicks) sent to an advertiser, or fresh clicks that have the potential of converting into a sale?
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Webmasters clicking a banner is fine for showing support, but if the click does not convert, what has it really accomplished. Most advertisers are looking for conversions.
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Here are a few alternatives to clicking on a banner. These alternatives show support for the content creator and bring traffic, which if executed correctly with the right advertising, should convert. Conversions are a numbers game. Most of these methods send traffic directly to the creators website, as opposed to an rss feed.

Social Bookmarking/Voting:

This perhaps is the most easiest way to show support for a content author. The concept of social bookmarking is to provide a repository in which users can organize and display their bookmarks. Most of these repositories are open, and are used to find new and interesting content. Social bookmarking sites have a tremendous readership and  can equate to a tremendous amount of traffic. I mention Toluu because it is becoming a new tool in my arsenal for discovery and promotion. Simply put, show support for an author by adding their feed into the Toluu database.
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  • Digg
  • Del.icio.us
  • Diigo
  • Magnolia
  • Mixx
  • StumbleUpon
  • Toluu


Social Content Aggregators:

Social content aggregators are becoming a new source of traffic. A multitude of methods can be used to get the word out on these sites. The most common methods that I have seen on FriendFeed, are posting content directly to the site, and sharing content via Google reader. The added bonus to these sites, more specifically Friendfeed is the FOAF feature.

  • FriendFeed
Social Networking sites:
  • Facebook
  • Myspace

Broadcasting/Micro blogging:

Broadcasting using any micro-blogging service such as Twitter is great for getting the word out quickly. It’s fast, and will definitely send some traffic. This could be very beneficial if you have a large enough legion of followers following you. If you write a personal or professional blog, always link back to the source somewhere on your posts. This gives credit where credit is due, but it also gives the content creator valuable search engine linkage and validity.

  • Blogs
  • Email (opt in newsletter)
  • Twitter
  • Identi.ca
  • FriendFeed

Commenting:

Post in multiple places. Consider only posting on blogs that use commenting systems like IntenseDebate and Disqus. These services offer more exposure. They add threaded conversations and community features.

  • Forums
  • Disqus
  • Intensedebate
Content Sharing:
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One common and very powerful way to show support for the author, is to share their content. The heavy weight that accomplishes this is Google reader. Google reader makes it easy to share content and even gives you a public webpage to display your shared items. Linkriver allows you to add content from an existing RSS/ATOM feed. You also can import a link feed (del.icio.us account, Google Reader shared items, etc.)
  • Google reader
  • Linkriver
  • RSSmeme

Word of mouth offline via keywords

As quoted from Benedikt on FriendFeed:

” Don’t forget offline promotion. Many people who are now regular readers and commenters of my blog came to my site because I told them the URL or keywords to Google for.”
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In conclusion their  are many was to show support. Do your part.

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  • July 24, 2008 at 5:40 am Mike Fruchter
    Allen Stern is doing a second piece on this. It's about the contract between reader and content creator.
  • July 24, 2008 at 11:57 am Svetlana Gladkova
    Yes, this one is an excellent post by Allen. And it really proves that only bloggers actually value what they do and are ready to help each other.
  • July 24, 2008 at 12:17 pm Mike Fruchter
    Svetlana but how many webmasters who show support, also convert the click to a sale? Not all but most advertisers are looking for conversions.
  • July 24, 2008 at 12:41 pm Mike Fruchter
    I know Allen will disagree, but compensating a webmaster by sending traffic to a website is as equal as clicking a banner. More traffic to the site, which in turn leads to more potential banner clicks.
  • July 24, 2008 at 1:33 pm Svetlana Gladkova
    Mike: I am talking from a publisher point of view, not advertiser - so I'm not all that concerned about conversion. And I myself agree that sending more traffic to a site is also a kind of compensation - so I constantly digg, submit to SU, share and do all that kind of strange things to help other bloggers get more visibility for worthy content.
  • July 24, 2008 at 2:04 pm Gregory Lent
    imagine it is five years from now, isp's charging by the gb, a ton of streaming stuff, online advertising has marginal returns, maybe 300 million blogs, still the same 24 hours in the day ... what do you think will be the appropriate compensation technique? ... microsubscriptions? i would happily put a hundred dollars a month into a pot, and have it dispersed to every blog i spend more than five minutes on in that month .. ten thousand people giving me a penny every month at least pays for my habit...
  • July 24, 2008 at 4:55 pm Robert Seidman
    Svetlana, because readers (at least in bulk, and the ones who are not bloggers, which hopefully for you is most of them or it's going to be lean times!) don't care about your issues as a publisher, they're in it for the content. I think from a business perspective Allen's take on this is pure folly --not because I don't understand and agree (emotionally) with where he is coming from, but because it isn't practical to try to change how people naturally operate. P.S. there is value to advertising (or so says the ad community) even if the ads are not clicked.
  • July 24, 2008 at 5:29 pm Svetlana Gladkova
    @Robert: I do understand that bloggers are only a minority of all readers for a normal blog (hopefully at least) and I know that the majority of people don't think in terms of publishers - they just want content they enjoy and never care if you have any income to support the site they enjoy at all. This basically explains why they don't click ads and we won't be able to make them change their way of thinking. This is why my way of compensating is by sending traffic - after all, professional bloggers often rely heavily on CPM ads, not on clicks.