Websites, radio stations, podcasts, and so forth ought to be stood up by party members with access to moneyāthe Harris campaign and associated groups, by the way, spent about $5 billion losing this electionāparticularly if they can replace genuine local news that has been gutted by private equity and Facebook, or if they are centered on subjects typically neglected by liberals like sports or gaming. The core strategy is to set up publications with progressive views but likely to have broader appeal. Honest partisanship should be the standard, rather than a pretend above-it-all āobjective journalismā that in practice means bending reality completely beyond recognition to benefit Donald Trump.
I just want to emphasize that to set up a truly independent and unpaywalled piece of media, you probably need to abandon hope of it being even a viable side hustle. Quasi-independent media on, say, YouTube or Substack can make some money, but youāre then stuck on those corporate platforms. If you want to do your own website or podcast or whatever, thatās more independent, but youāre still dependent on Google if you run ads, or on Patreon if you do that sort of thing. The lesson of Twitter should make pretty clear the danger inherent to that ecosystem. Even podcasts that seem independent can easily get into huge trouble if, say, Musk were to buy Patreon or iHeart.
Iāve been writing on my website for over two years now. My goal has always been to be completely independent of these kinds of platforms for the long term, no matter what, and the siteās popularity has frankly exceeded my wildest dreams. For example, Iām the #1 google result for āanticapitalist tech:ā
But I make no money. If I wanted this to be anything but a hobby, Iād have to sacrifice something that I think makes it valuable: Iād have to paywall something, or run ads, or have a paid discord server, or restrict the RSS feed. As things stand now, I donāt know my exact conversion rate because I donāt do any analytics and delete all web logs after a week, but I did keep the web logs from the most recent time that I went viral (top of hackernews and several big subreddits). I made something like 100 USD in tips, even though the web logs have millions of unique IPs. Thatās a conversion rate of something like 0.00002 USD per unique visitor.
Honestly, if I got paid even $15/hr, I would probably switch to doing it at least as a part time job, because I love it. Compare that to the right wing ecosystem, where thereās fracking money and Thiel money just sloshing around, and itās very very obvious why Democrats are fucked, much less an actual, meaningful left. Even Thiel himself was a right wing weirdo before he was a tech investor, and a right wing think tank funded his anti-DEI book. He then went on to fund Vance. Itās really hard to fight that propaganda machine part time.
Iāll put you on my rss feed
Welcome aboard š«”
You can always add a donate button without paywalling anything. Thereās nothing wrong with having one at the end of each post. Itāll only push users away if you make it flashy or sticky.
Label it ābuy me a coffeeā and it signals itās more of a tip than an attempt to monetize.
Iāve tried it all: modals, banners, rewording it, ā¦ and, like, I get it. If I contributed a few bucks to every worthwhile thing, Iād run out of money quickly. There actually is one at the bottom of every post right now, though itās quite small, because Iāve learned that it really doesnāt matter.
Also, to be clear, I didnāt mean to complain or anything. I just wanted to explain the reality of the ecosystem as it currently exists, to the best of my knowledge.