Chasing Online Revenue Streams
When I was in college (2003-2006) I used to keep a toolbar of bookmarks on my browser. Most people back then kept an RSS feed but I was silly and liked to manually click the link to the website and see what new stuff the site or blog had for me to read that day. Most of these were webcomics and food blogs.
Each day I would click the links and check out the latest issue of Questionable Content, Diesel Sweeties, and Girls With Slingshots. The comic strip itself was "above the fold" of the page, with a comment section below surrounded by long skyscraper ads. Some sites had ad banners along the top or sides of the strips, but the big take here is that these sites generated enough money from their ads to make the blog or comic strip a full time job.
At some point around 2007 to 2009, Wordpress overtook Blogger and Xanga to become the default blogging platform. Articles and books came out that explained to potential entrepreneurs that they too could make tons of money by writing articles and blogs by way of SEO battle tactics. Folks would stuff articles with keywords, add tags to each post and list every single one of them at the bottom of the page. Getting traction from Google searches and the race to be the top result now had monetary value because getting those clicks got your viewers to see the ads which, at the time, brought in decent money.
Then around 2010-2012 there were so many blogs stuffed to the gills with ads and keywords that readers were turned off by the wall of unrelated animated gifs. There were so many ads going on that pretty soon the declining revenue from views and clicks no longer made it worth keeping them on your site. The ads were just as bad as your local news website, with animated gifs or content that might not align with the theme. Absolutely unhinged stuff.
At this point, bloggers began to pivot from creating SEO bait for ads to show up on their site to becoming what we now call influencers. The ads disappeared from the sidebar and were now the content itself. Articles became review blogs, with companies compensating the authors by means of free products, food, trips, and other promotional items. Then at the end of the article were these things called affiliate links to the items featured in the post.
I think this was the biggest pivot for me, as someone who followed blogs and such, to lose trust in the authors. I couldn't believe what they were saying to be true. We now have disclaimers for paid promotions but back then, you had no idea. The listicle became the top type of blog post, with plenty of affiliate links to tempt the reader.
But just like the google ads before the affiliate link rewards began to dip too. This, coupled with the death of most RSS readers and 4G internet speeds, reached the point when video started to take over. Before, someone might make a video to post to their blog to showcase how a product worked or to make a tutorial. But now people could watch videos on iPads. Who was sitting at a giant tower PC scrolling through text anymore? (I was, it was me.)
I think it was around 2016 when my kids started getting into watching people do random things on YouTube. Not to find out how to do something or watch a music video, but to watch someone sit and play videogames. Anyone could start a YouTube channel and vlog their day or - you guessed it - advertise products for other companies. The worst of these were the "family" vlogs where parents and their kids would open toys or do wasteful food challenges. But these channels were raking in money.
Here is the thing about video. Not all of us have a face for video, nor do we have the editing chops to make them. But don't worry because while all this video revenue claim staking was going on, text based content was on the rebound.
Amazon's Kindle came out in 2007 and in 2005 they purchased a self publishing company called CreateSpace. Soon, anyone could write a book and self publish it on Amazon for nearly nothing and make money using the same SEO and keyword tactics they learned from their days of blogging. The two biggest winners in this race were nonfiction self-help or how-to books that were simply bound editions of the authors evergreen blog posts. Self published fiction, specifically the romance genre, also took off during this time thanks to thirsty readers who could now download the books straight to their e-readers.
But writing books does require advertising outside of buying a case of your own books during the first week to bump your sales and get you that coveted "#1 Best Seller in _____" where the blank is whatever niche genre keyword you picked for your book category was. These authors were also raking in the cash early on. But the major payouts eased off just like the other platforms after a while. That's when these authors and other bloggers really started to ramp up something that had been around for a while - the email newsletter.
Every single marketing playbook these days will tell you to build an email list. Back in the Wordpress.com days, when you published your blog it would email anyone who had subscribed to the blog with the latest post. Blogger also had this. Rather than sit at your desk and wait for the little red dot to appear on your RSS reader icon you could just check your email and simply read it right there in your inbox. The problem was that it bypassed your actual site and the ads it contained.
Every website has a popup that shows up about half a minute after you load the page asking you to give them your email. I'm not gonna mention the shady practices of selling your info to 3rd parties because that's beyond the scope of this rant. Now you don't even have to ever go back to the site because at this point in the game, we weren't sitting at our desk - we are on our phones and phones have something very important for advertising - push notifications.
So we let RSS basically die out in favor of push notifications. My main email is twenty years old and gets on average 30-40 promotional emails sent to it from all the places I've signed up for over the years. At this point I don't even check that tab. Your email is dead to me.
But.
I'm taking forever to get to the email list bit but it needs the setup.
Back in 2010 the email newsletter was on par with a personal blog. It was an update for followers to keep up with major things going on for the week. I ran a weekly newsletter that had at max 90 readers where all I did was link to or talk about various articles or sites I had found that week, followed by a handful of affiliate links that nobody ever clicked on. It was fun. It was on TinyLetter.
I miss you TinyLetter.
[Sarah McLachlan music plays in the background.]
Anyway, email newsletters were used by everyone from bloggers, online stores, and authors to keep their followers not just updated but to keep them engaged with their content. But an email list was a net loss for most people back then. It was an extra hourly cost to produce in hopes of hooking the reader with a sale or video view. That is, until Substack.
About the time Substack came out, TinyLetter had been eaten by Mailchimp. Blogging platforms no longer offered the option to email the subscribers for free. Sending mass emails became expensive. Even now, sending bulk emails can get very expensive very quickly. Building a giant email list is worthless if you can't afford to send emails to them. Substack came out as a free option to send mass emails. I have two of them right now just for that reason. They make money from taking a cut from the paid subscribers on the platform.
Just like Patreon, which is a totally viable option for anyone who wants to monetize a hobby by building a following and offering them whatever service or content you produce, Substack offers optional tiered subscription levels for readers of a newsletter. The goal of course, was to let writers and bloggers monetize their content. The problem? They are paying to read an email, which if you aren't already popular online will be extremely difficult. That and Substack is a walled garden and an echo chamber but that's also beyond the scope of this rant.
So now what? We aren't checking emails because that's where work is. We have our phones set to do not disturb and turn off all the notifications. But we are scrolling through 30 second videos when we have a spare minute of free time. Instagram reels, Tiktok videos, Youtube shorts, whatever. Every platform has these now, and if your video takes off you can - you guessed it - make money from the views.
For now.
Until that ad revenue dries up and everyone pivots to the next platform.
Anyway, I wonder what the next online content gold rush will be.
The two things I miss most from 2012 are TinyLetter and the Windows Phone.
[Sarah McLachlan music fades out.]