There has been lots of recent talk in the past week or so over media content on the internet: payment, profit, and rights. Just how long can media producers produce and endless stream of content without being paid? It’s easy to say people like the Associated Press are greedy bastards, but if they and the other big boys go down, just where will bloggers get their ideas to blog about. Also how long can bloggers and other small sites stay around without getting any profit. We have all, from the big boys to the small sites, drank the Kool-Aid…build up and drive traffic to your site by giving out great content, and then, and then….There was this hope that some great advertising model would come along that would work the way it worked for print publications. It has failed to appear, and most of us are stuck with these lame google ads, and their “top secret” payment policy. Google refuses to tell people that run their ads their payment scheme, and it is in constant flux. For example, my site traffic has tripled, yet my google ad revenue has flat lined. How is that possible, especially for the ads I am running that are paid per view (not click)?
Socialism is an economic model where everyone contributes and shares what they have. Your labor in your sector guarantees you a roof over your head, and your share of what other people in other sectors produce…a kind of massive swap meet. The current internet media model is not even socialism, as content is generated for absolutely no profit — other than ego profit — to the producer. Unfortunately, visitors to a blog or site, see you as a business, even though they are not paying or contributing anything, and demand a certain level of service. There is a theory in capitalism that the customer is always right. This is because they are paying and money talks. In the internet world, customers have grown use to this level of customer service and make unforgiving demands on the producers of free internet content. There is no “thanks for sharing when you can” instead you get bitchy emails from non-paying “customers” demanding top-level services and writing for free. This is just not a sustainable system.
Writing is a profession that went from low-paying to no-paying. There used to be two avenues for the literary-minded. The low-rent, yet idealistic, path of journalism, and the sell-out superhighway of advertising. Journalism jobs are disappearing to be replaced by blogging and websites. After many years work of driving up traffic, however, many web-writers are wondering when, and how, is profit ever possible? What will happen to our writers?
I, myself, have been writing very long, in-depth horoscope columns on-and-off since 2005. I write approximately 8,000 words over 12 signs and the overview each month. To put this in perspective, a novel is defined as a work with minimum of 40,000 words. So I am writing about one-fifth of a novel a month as free content (this is not counting my blogs and tweets). This is a significant amount of writing for no financial gain. Sometimes, as recently, I can’t post them because life issues get in the way. What’s worse is that people (non-paying people) have come to expect this high-level of writing as a given, and send me hate mail when my horoscopes either don’t run, are late or are shorter than the norm. This makes me wonder what is the point, I feel my work is just taken for granted. It’s free, and if you can’t keep up, people hate on you instead of cutting you some slack, and being grateful for when you can give. This is the reason I didn’t post the scopes this month. I wrote them, but didn’t feel like sharing them anymore, if all I get is abuse.
I, like so many others, now have to experiment with a new business model or simply stop offering free content. I have reached the point lately that I can’t keep it where I spend so much time writing free horoscopes, that I am actually putting off PAID work. There will still be some form of free horoscopes, but they will not be nearly as long or involved. It is the only way I can keep the site going. I wish I had the time and money and energy to give it all away for free, but I just can’t. Would you?
Now what is creating this mass shift in consciousness in regards to the internet?
The internet and technology is ruled by Aquarius, and is having its first Jupiter return since it entered into everyday use back in the mid-90s. Jupiter takes about 13 years to go around the zodiac, and we are entering Chapter Two in just how the internet will function and keep going. Presently, Jupiter is conjunctiing Chiron and Neptune, making people wake up to patterns of delusional behaviour in a big way. Neptune can also bring up feelings of fear over the vague unknown, and Jupiter can be feeding this paranoia. Many sites are realising that traffic is not the gravy train it was promised to be and fearing future failure unless they can start generating some type of viable income to help them earn a living. Chiron is the cold coffee forcing content producers to realise that they can’t keep burying their heads in the sand; there will be no magical cash cow coming there way. This is universal (Aquarius) and cuts all providers, from the small to the big, the same way, and all are having the same problems. This will continue throughout 2009 to be big news, especially around May 28th when Jupiter is exactly conjunct both Neptune and Chiron, as well as July 10th and December 21st with Jupiter conjunct Neptune with Chiron nearby.
A new economic model that is viable should appear in 2011 and be fully-implemented and running by early 2012 when Neptune leaves Aquarius for good.
