you're so wrong on so many levels -- let's start here. i only click on ads thst interest me and only when i have the time. whcih means that i never click on ads on what you call content. never seen one that interests me and i'm generally not shopping when reading blogs. and if you think your advertisers want to pay for a guilt driven click, you should check with them. thats click fraud allen. lots more to say about this, let;s see if this gets a reasonable response. - Dave Winer

Allen, I have to agree with Dave on this one. I doubt advertisers would value the 'guilt-driven' clicks as highly. For that matter, I think this would actually devalue your CPC rate since advertisers would no longer know the level of engagement of the person clicking the ad. - Jim McCusker

Holy Hell, Winer got one right. @Allen, start a conference and/or sell merchandise. Web ads are dying. - Jason Carreira

Dave: I don't think Allen is wrong, but that he may not have said it the best way. As I wrote on his blog, we've all become blind to ads. I think he's really just asking for us to open our eyes and see if there is anything there that we would be interested in checking out. Once I did that, I saw two ads I was interested in, one about Qwest and another about a coming expo. - Dawn

If you're basically going to demand "payment" for your content, then do it right and actually make it a pay service. People running adblockers don't just do it to avoid paying for content. They want a quieter web experience. They don't want the extra malware vector. Lots of reasons to boot or ignore web advertising, totally unrelated to screwing over the content producer. - abacab

This is more about (e)books, but I see no reason why the general idea can't be applied to blogs: http://scalzi.com/whateve... Maybe "finding another way" is the answer, keeping your readers happy and engaged in your content, rather than forcing guilt on them about their free consumption of it. - abacab

Allen, you know we disagree on this one. The advertisers themselves would disagree. The biggest problem is that the ads that seem to "fit" on tech blogs are preaching to the choir. What blogs make money? Celebrity gossip blogs. Why? They aren't running ads for celebrity merchandise, for the most part, but for things their readers actually buy. I'm not going to click on an ad to pay a blogger. I'm going to click on an ad because it's something I'm interested in reading more about. - Cyndy

Allen, if you really want to follow this model then I'd suggest forcing users to view ads before being able to read the article. Of course, this will tick off a lot of people, but you can continue to justify it since you need a way to monetize. Offer a paid subscription model for readers who don't want to see ads. Limit your RSS feeds to a summary paragraph with a link back to the ad-supported article. I personally don't think the audience will put up with this, nor will advertisers support false click - Jim McCusker

Allen, I tried literally 10 times to type a coment in your comments but no luck. The capcha just wont accept what I type. I tried both the visual & audio, capitals & no capits...absolutely no luck. Anyway, this is what I was I had to say.... - Zee.

Well, after chatting with both Allen and Cyndy on her podcast the other night, I tried a little experiment (just for kicks ... things change all the time). So far, still holding tough. Sponsors are coming. CPM is slowly going away. Not necessarily for websites but likely for blogs. - Charlie Anzman

I heard you loud & clear Allen and believe it or not, have been stopping at yours plenty of other blogs to show my appreciation with a click of an ad...however it is so inefficient and the idea of clicking an ad for "tips-sake" is pretty ridiculous & completely defeats the purpose of advertising when most people will simply click & immediately close down the the tab/window. I'm not saying I have the answers, but if tipping via clicking becomes mainstream who knows how advertisers looking for returns will react. - Zee.

Sorry for the trouble Zee - I will check with Mollom on why you received the captcha - your comment doesn't appear out of the norm. And thanks for making the attempt - more than I can say for the others. - Allen Stern

Charlie - remember what I said on the call - sponsors are great but they want results too. - Allen Stern

There's an absolute way to serve both masters: readers and advertisers. You can always get there from here. - Morgan Warstler

I generally try to avoid subscribing to ad-supported blogs. Not as a principled stance, but purely for practical reasons: ad-supported writers continue to write even when there is no need for it. They write for impressions rather than people. They clutter up the flow. So in all honesty, I wouldn't miss 99% of them if they disappeared tomorrow. - Roger Benningfield

you know what roger, that's bullshit - at least for me - Allen Stern

Whoa. How timely. I was thinking of taking on a single sponsor up in the right hand corner, a la Scoble. But after I asked my personal advisory board, and after reading this, I think I'll make money the old fashioned way. Porn. : ) - Chris Brogan

good one chris - maybe i try escort services - im sexy! - Allen Stern

@ChrisBrogan - I know I am only speaking for myself here, but have no desire to see you in a porno. ;) - Todd Defren

This whole discussion reminds me of the one I started a few days ago regarding paying for music. The audience doesn't really care about you making money directly from your product. The product being your content. The answer to both is to find another way to make money. - Rahsheen ™, Coach Rah

@ToddDefren - Well then call home and tell them not to open that brown package I sent. : ) - Chris Brogan

Rasheen - telling musicians they need to do concerts to make money will absolutely never work. It will work for the top 1% of bands, what do the other 99% do? Same thing here - for the content sources (text/video/etc) that are in the top 1%, they might be able to make it off other sources, but the rest won't - should all of them close down? When I read others postings about this topic, it always makes me wonder where people sit on the financial line. - Allen Stern

@Allen, are you sure? I've personally known dozens of indie artists who've thrown themselves into full time musicianship, and while they aren't living the gold-plated high-life, they're able to hobble together a nice living wage between online music sales, merchandising and concert performance. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

Allen: I'm reporting my local reality here. Looking at my subscription list, almost everyone on it writes to be writing. They were writing the same stuff before they figured out how to install AdSense, and they would continue doing so if Google imploded tomorrow. I wrote thousand word blog entries for years before "blog" was a word... we just called 'em forum posts or Usenet messages. No one was getting paid, but we cranked that content out anyway. That's just the way it is in my corner of the universe - Roger Benningfield

Yeah, I think you're off there Allen... Any halfway decent band can make a living if they have a good manager getting them shows. Hell, DMB managed to get rich, and I refused to see them for free at the Georgia Theatre in Athens more than once. - Jason Carreira

Mark/Jason - I am not a music expert - Allen Stern

my 2cents (where's the jar?) http://www.winextra.com/2008... - Steven Hodson

Roger, I wrote enough usenet messages and did probably 15,000 support hours on irc and never received a dime. I run CN to help startups make better decisions based on my experience and education. I spend way too many hours providing free consulting for startups across the world. I hope you will give CN a try. - Allen Stern

I couldn't be called one either - It's been over 10 years since I was full time in the music business, so my evidence is purely anecdotal. - Mark "Rizzn" Hopkins

just for clarification, i don't think of ads as a tip jar - i think of ads as a way to support the publishers that provide you with more information than when you woke up this morning. i always enjoy this discussion and hope one day we can setup a live panel around it - Allen Stern

Well guilt based clicks aren't going to cut it. In fact, clicks in general probably won't cut it. Good direct marketers will find a way to make it work for *them* but the economics aren't going to be good for publishers. Make the case for brand equity - brand movement. Do users on your site think better of an advertiser than they did previously? CTR is a dying metric for ads. - AJ Kohn

Ads are something people click because they're offering people something they (think they might) want...and that something isn't your content, it's the advertiser's product. Ads aren't something people click on to thank people for providing content. Nor should they be. Most advertisers forbid that usage anyway. It still sounds like an unworkable tip-jar scheme to me... - abacab

And hey, why not blog it? http://www.chrisbrogan.com/the-old... - Chris Brogan

Let me reclarify what I said in my initial post (not this one)... People should ONLY click on the ads that interest them but if they block ads because blocking is cool, they will never see the ads that they might be interested in. I spend a lot of time picking the right advertisers and ads and turn down more ads than I accept (probably why my tv set is 17 yrs old). I am NOT advocating just clicking on ads for clicking sake. If we never get past this, CPM ads will be around forever. I don't think there is any reason why Chris shouldn't put ads on his site. I believe it's all a relationship between you, me and the advertisers. I can go on but this box is limited. I am happy to debate this topic anytime, any place. It's a good discussion to have. - Allen Stern

@Allen - how about 9PM EST on my Discussion Point podcast over on Talkshoe?? - you - me - the topic and whoever wants to call in - Steven Hodson

sure sounds good Steven - Allen Stern

cool .. I'll post the link in FF and announcement in a short bit - Steven Hodson

@Steven are you going to have a marketeer on your 'talkshoe'? I think you should - Roger Kondrat

Some more food for thought - http://is.gd/1X1w - Roger Kondrat