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At last,
the contents of Aardvark's "million-dollar ideas" notebook
are revealed for all to see!
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Yesterday I suggested that the news media was really having trouble finding
new stuff to write about when it comes to the Net -- and as if to prove my
point I see that the NZ Herald has managed to squeeze a third day's news(?) out
of the MS "sinister file" story and IDG is similarly eking all the mileage
it can out of that JetStream billing risk.
However, to avoid falling into the same trap, I will be sure not to mention this
subject tomorrow ;-)
Pay Up!
During period that I've been publishing Aardvark (more than 6 years now) I have,
from time to time, played around with generating revenues from advertising.
Quite frankly, I don't think that online advertising helps either the reader
or the advertiser. Do you really want Aardvark's spartan pages cluttered
with banners promoting stuff you don't want or already knew about?
And how much would you expect an advertiser to pay in order to reach 1,500-2,500
of NZ's most intelligent Net users and industry players? Not much these days,
certainly not enough to cover the time and costs associated with producing Aardvark
to a daily schedule.
I've also considered the subscription option -- but dismissed it as being
entirely contra to the concept of the Net. The type of information I'm publishing
here deserves to be free -- besides which the numbers still don't add up and,
based on feedback and a general "feel" for the market, I'd say that introducing
a subscription model would simply kill the audience while returning a mere
pittance in revenues.
Of course I could syndicate my daily column in much the same way I'm syndicating
and selling content from my
7amNews/ShockHorrorProbe site --
but unfortunately I think I'm a little outspoken for any mainstream publishers
to risk republishing what you read here.
So how does one go about covering the costs and time involved in producing
a site like Aardvark?
Well I'm going to leave it up to you -- the reader. Tell me what you think
Aardvark is worth (oh, what a cruel piece of arm-twisting!)
As of today, all donations will be gladly accepted through
my secure server.
Feel free to donate as much as you want -- I won't complain -- honest!
Readers To The Rescue
Yesterday's call for suggestions as to what areas you'd like to see covered
on a slow-news day produced a raft of responses with some really good ideas.
I'm still busy sorting through them but there appears to be enough to keep
me going for quite a while -- thanks folks.
In the meantime -- don't forget that all suggestions for the Friday Lighten-Up
section are gratefully received, don't be shy!
Aardvark also makes a summary of this daily column available via XML using
the RSS format. More details can be found
here.
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