Sponsor Me, If You Will(malone.cc)
malone.cc
Sponsor Me, If You Will
http://malone.cc/sponsor-me-if-you-will/
27 comments
I fully accept the fact that I'm a tiny blogger with little to no material who probably shouldn't be doing this.
But I'm doing it.
But I'm doing it.
If it's not nofollowed, any sponsorship link could well be worth $5 especially after the site's been linked from here?
At some point, the Million Dollar Homepage seemed ridiculous, but once it started getting press (and thus pagerank), links from it increased in value. Was nofollow a common thing back then? There would've been a sweet spot when it was notable enough to get press, but not enough for your link to be swamped amongst many others.
Assuming there's still traffic beyond the initial 800 HN visitors, $5 for a couple thousand more targeted viewers isn't ridiculous.
At some point, the Million Dollar Homepage seemed ridiculous, but once it started getting press (and thus pagerank), links from it increased in value. Was nofollow a common thing back then? There would've been a sweet spot when it was notable enough to get press, but not enough for your link to be swamped amongst many others.
Assuming there's still traffic beyond the initial 800 HN visitors, $5 for a couple thousand more targeted viewers isn't ridiculous.
Apologies for the off-topic post, but the hyphenated blog-ger in the first paragraph really caught my eye. I never knew that Wordpress, or any online publishing medium actually supported intelligent hyphenation at the end of a line.
I sometimes see incredibly widely spaced lines in full-line-width justified blogs (first word of the next line is a very long word that doesn't fit in the previous line), which always made for an awkward experience. Hats off to Wordpress for implementing this.
I sometimes see incredibly widely spaced lines in full-line-width justified blogs (first word of the next line is a very long word that doesn't fit in the previous line), which always made for an awkward experience. Hats off to Wordpress for implementing this.
It's probably the "hyphens: auto" [1] in the CSS that's doing it. No support in Chrome yet [2].
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#hyphenation [2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-hyphens
[1] http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#hyphenation [2] http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-hyphens
Malone, at the current price of Free, I'd love to sponsor you. Here's to hoping the demand gets you to raise prices soon ;)
So, I suspect the reason Gruber etc. get that kind of money is that they have a very large number of readers (because of their content) and that there's a power law at work and that your blog is worth next-to-nothing.
To give you some figures from jgc.org:
On May 13, 2010 I added a link to every blog post taking readers to Amazon.com to buy my book. Since then I have had 2,699,126 page views and 14,191 clicks on the link resulting in total money to me of $560.59.
So three years at 75,000 page views a month worked out to $15 a month.
Gruber is getting 5 million page views a month (66x jgc.org) and getting $37,000 (2,500x jgc.org).
Yes, I could probably monetize jgc.org better, but what I'd really need is page views.
To give you some figures from jgc.org:
On May 13, 2010 I added a link to every blog post taking readers to Amazon.com to buy my book. Since then I have had 2,699,126 page views and 14,191 clicks on the link resulting in total money to me of $560.59.
So three years at 75,000 page views a month worked out to $15 a month.
Gruber is getting 5 million page views a month (66x jgc.org) and getting $37,000 (2,500x jgc.org).
Yes, I could probably monetize jgc.org better, but what I'd really need is page views.
Gotta hand it to you for having the balls to do it (and submit to HN).
Not gonna lie; I thought I'd get my ass kicked. You guys scare me a little.
If you get scared by HN, I assume you haven't tried a 4chan submission before...
A 4chan submission seems like a desperate attempt to get eyes on your product. Has anyone every tried this before?
"How I used 4chan to make $X" would be an interesting read.
"How I used 4chan to make $X" would be an interesting read.
The book is one page. It has "I didn't." in all-caps serif, followed by a picture of an anime character doing something unseemly with a bag of money.
Happens all the time, gets called out all the time.
Check out make like game daily (Game dev general) for a good example of how to approach it http://boards.4chan.org/vg/res/36005690 (nws)
https://twitter.com/AGDGBot if the link above is dead
Check out make like game daily (Game dev general) for a good example of how to approach it http://boards.4chan.org/vg/res/36005690 (nws)
https://twitter.com/AGDGBot if the link above is dead
On the back of increased visits from this thread you should probably raise prices :P
I think the $5 mark should stay for the first one, then we'll see :).
Not sure where the sarcasm ends on your blog but if you're really serious about the sponsorship here's what you can do:
1. Setup a fiverr account and post the sponsorship as a $5 gig (the real dollars, US that is ;) )
2. Mention in there you've been recently mentioned on a high-profile news site
3. Post a photo of the traffic stats
4. Profit...
Luckily for him, the value of AUD is almost exactly the same as USD.
This takes balls, not gonna lie.
Stay funny! Your blunt comical honesty would bring me back. Just keep posting and you'll get your users...btw how's the traffic spike?
It's amazeballs.
I like the idea — I'll be interested to see if you get any takers.
As will I, although I'm guessing I might get some fake ones. Like "Hey, I'm building a citrus forum called LemonParty..."
[deleted]
I'm trying to do the same with Tomatoes[1].
[1] http://tomato.es/pages/sponsors
[1] http://tomato.es/pages/sponsors
If you work really hard on making a quality podcast that gives value to a target audience, I promise you you'll never have to ask for sponsorship. People will knock on your door, money in fist.
At that point, you may even choose not to because your built-up audience will buy from you.
That said, there is no harm in trying. There may be takers. The only problem is that if there are a lot of takers, HN could be overrun with this sort of stuff.
I wish you success!
At that point, you may even choose not to because your built-up audience will buy from you.
That said, there is no harm in trying. There may be takers. The only problem is that if there are a lot of takers, HN could be overrun with this sort of stuff.
I wish you success!
You say that the inspiration comes from other sponsored bloggers, but there's a difference between what you are asking and what they are asking. John Gruber and Marco Arment have both created useful products. They proved that if they have the freedom to manage their own time, then they will build things that other people want to use. I flipped through many of your blog posts and Tweets trying to get a feel for the type of work you do. I couldn't find anything of value.
All I found were number of pop culture references and one paragraph summaries of tiny projects that you gave up on when the time came to implement. For example, Maelstrom was something that was related to Twitter streams. If I'm reading the dates correctly, you appear to have started work on the 18th and then quit the following day, stating burnout after a few hours of programming. Now its the 20th, and you are here asking for money. That is not the type of work ethic that gives me any confidence in your ability to produce valuable content in the future.
@Prawn compared this to the million dollar homepage. However, I think there's a big disconnect between the two. That homepage was always explained as an advertising experiment. You are asking for money in the hopes that a few hundred dollars will be the missing key to producing anything of value.
It feels smarmy to me (someone who works a 9-5 and still manages to slowly grow his own company in his free time) to see someone who built nothing of value ask for a hand out. Its actually worse than building nothing. There is evidence that you cannot focus on a project for more than a weekend.
In all honesty, if your Twitter account hadn't been created back in September, I would assume this is another elaborate test to see how social networks can be gamed.
If that all came across as overtly negative, then good. I think that we could all use more positive comments when they are warranted, but I cannot find anything about this that isn't slimy.
To be fair, if anyone cares to dig through my own history, it's easy to find that I actually did the same thing at one point in my life. The difference is that I was 15 at the time.