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Compensation for content creators

July 24th, 2008
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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.

Mike Fruchter

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