SocraticGadfly: A note to Examiner — and HuffPost/AOL — serfs

February 12, 2011

A note to Examiner — and HuffPost/AOL — serfs

Examiner serfs (and a heads-up for HuffPost/Aol serfs): Don't you get irritated, apprehensive and anxious to see your parent company advertising all the time for YET MORE WRITERS?
People who would like to use the Internet with less spam: Doesn't the oncoming SEO deluge worry you? What next — "Examiners" from India? The Philippines? Any place where English has reasonable standing as a second language?

And, whether it's being paid on a piecework basis, like Demand does, or paid on a page hit count/visits, like Examiner and others, I still can't see how payment is going to go anywhere but down.

The NYT has a good overview on SEO websites and writing for them here.

As for my claims that we're due for a tech bubble bursting, CNN has a story on how Demand Media was able to raise $151M in an IPO despite losing nearly $10M last year, $22M in 2009, and countless millions in the years before. It's crazy; these companies are overvalued and someday the piper will be paid.

As for me? Yes, I make a few bucks off the Google ads, and a few bucks off click-throughs. Not much, but it could be more if serf-spammers who write about crap, rather than people who write about ideas and issues, weren't so prevalent on the Net.

But, I started this blog before I was offered the chance for click-through money and before I looked at activating AdSense, which I don't think was even available to me then.

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