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Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

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Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#41
post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a valid concern, but honestly I think the distorting effects are probably much less than e.g., having to chase clickbait topics for CPM advertising or having Carlos Slim be your largest single investor, etc.

You piqued my curiosity. What's the Carlos Slim comment related to?

He's probably referring to the New York Times.

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you have to ask yourself the fundamental question. How does John make a living? Perhaps he could move to a paid subscription model. That seems fraught with risk but it's true it's a possibility. But even then you pander to your paid audience vs the paid advertiser (if all your paid subscribers are Apple fans and you noticed a 10% subscription cancellation when you belittle the Apple Watch what happens to your…

Traditional journalism doesn't try and mix advertising and content to the level this does. This feels closer to BuzzFeed's infamous organic content ( http://techcrunch.com/2014/08/12/buzzhome/ ) than it does to what a newspaper might do.

That's very traditional. Most computer magazines f.e. are under so much pressure that a complete separation is difficult.

Even the ones that still have a separation, are a little bit more gray in the sense, that they do special deals i.e. free software for their coverstory and so forth.

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#43
post #10
post #5

Really interesting to see these numbers. I've been reading DF for years and years, and its is the only advertising model I've encountered that doesn't grate. His advertising is considerate, audience appropriate, and vetted. I feel good supporting his advertisers, because I feel good supporting him, and because they're just consistently things I'm happy to hear about. I would really love to see more independent journa…

I'd rather not. It introduces a pretty big conflict of interest (for example, Gruber would probably think twice before writing something negative about a former sponsor when he's on the record endorsing them) and blurs the line between advertising and editorial content. As mentioned in the article: > the cost today ranges between $8,000 – $10,000 dollars per placement and you get to write your own post, essentially M…

John has been sponsored by Google(1) and by Microsoft(2) both of which he has written some decidedly negative things about. I think he takes conflict of interest seriously, and has a strong division between his editorial and his advertising content.

1: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2014/08/10/ios-at-google

2: http://daringfireball.net/linked/2013/04/20/windows-azure-mo...

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#44

A previous amusing note from Gruber[1] on his sponsorship system and a sales email from Taboola, purveyor of the obnoxious click-bait grids that you're starting to see all over: > Speaking of revenue and pageviews, true story: I got an email yesterday from a sales rep at Taboola, pitching me on running their ads on DF. It included this line: “I see your site is not monetized at present, and I think there is room to d…

How you dragged "bloatware loaded Windows installs" into this I don't understand.

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Believe me, I understand how hard it is. I've been working alone on a project for the past 2.5 years now (not quite ready for prime-time, but soon), so I know exactly what you mean. However, two things are just inexcusable to me: 1) this is a writing app /with no support for paragraph breaks/. That is unbelievable to me. Nobody who writes for a living can use an app that shows all of your text to you as a really larg…

I won't win this argument (and I won't try), but, I appreciate the time you took to write me a response! 1. I'm working on this and the feature was an attempt to combine both WYSIWYG and Markdown into one formatting experience. This ended up being a gamble and one that I lost and the newest updates will address this. It sucks, i failed, i got it wrong. 2. A lot? sure. i guess. there are tons of great alternatives, fo…

Re.: 2. Don't worry about the price point atm. He might be right that it is not worth currently for him, but it looks like that a lot of other people value it.

If you continue adding features and continue making the product as a whole better and more valuable for a larger and larger audience.

So eventually he should be happy as well.

That requires obviously, that you mostly add features. i.e. you don't re-invent features or redesign features without adding value (just to make prettier), I have seen a lot of teams/people doing that kind of mistake.

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#46
post #10
post #5

Really interesting to see these numbers. I've been reading DF for years and years, and its is the only advertising model I've encountered that doesn't grate. His advertising is considerate, audience appropriate, and vetted. I feel good supporting his advertisers, because I feel good supporting him, and because they're just consistently things I'm happy to hear about. I would really love to see more independent journa…

I'd rather not. It introduces a pretty big conflict of interest (for example, Gruber would probably think twice before writing something negative about a former sponsor when he's on the record endorsing them) and blurs the line between advertising and editorial content. As mentioned in the article: > the cost today ranges between $8,000 – $10,000 dollars per placement and you get to write your own post, essentially M…

On the other hand the advertising posts are very clearly indicated to be such, there's no attempt to actualy disguise them as editorial. Furthermore by explicitly posting endorsements with the other content he's drectly putting his own credibility on the line. If the advertised service is sub-par in any way it directly reflects on him.

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#47

Great post. Thank you for sharing all of this - really great information and I'm thrilled for you that you took a risk and it really paid off. Cheers to that! That said, your site has so few images on it of the actual product, that for a price of $30, I feel like you are holding back for a reason. I buy anything and everything, but this doesn't feel right. When someone displays their admittedly very nice logo far mor…

I appreciate that a lot!

To answer your question, i had actually was trying to explicitly move people to the app store to "view" the images there... but i could do a better job of providing those screens... thanks for that!

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#48
post #10
post #5

Really interesting to see these numbers. I've been reading DF for years and years, and its is the only advertising model I've encountered that doesn't grate. His advertising is considerate, audience appropriate, and vetted. I feel good supporting his advertisers, because I feel good supporting him, and because they're just consistently things I'm happy to hear about. I would really love to see more independent journa…

I'd rather not. It introduces a pretty big conflict of interest (for example, Gruber would probably think twice before writing something negative about a former sponsor when he's on the record endorsing them) and blurs the line between advertising and editorial content. As mentioned in the article: > the cost today ranges between $8,000 – $10,000 dollars per placement and you get to write your own post, essentially M…

Jason Snell wrote an interesting article about his experience with an advertiser and sponsorships. He's running his own blog now (Six Colors) with a similar model to Gruber.

http://sixcolors.com/post/2014/12/no-other-gatekeeper-but-me...

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#49
post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd rather not. It introduces a pretty big conflict of interest (for example, Gruber would probably think twice before writing something negative about a former sponsor when he's on the record endorsing them) and blurs the line between advertising and editorial content. As mentioned in the article: > the cost today ranges between $8,000 – $10,000 dollars per placement and you get to write your own post, essentially M…

I think you have to ask yourself the fundamental question. How does John make a living? Perhaps he could move to a paid subscription model. That seems fraught with risk but it's true it's a possibility. But even then you pander to your paid audience vs the paid advertiser (if all your paid subscribers are Apple fans and you noticed a 10% subscription cancellation when you belittle the Apple Watch what happens to your…

> Perhaps he could move to a paid subscription model.

It was on a paid subscription model before the current one. Loading the site was free, but you had to pay for the RSS feed.

Or maybe it was that buying a shirt got you RSS feed access for a while? Don't quite remember now.

Re: Does Sponsoring Daring Fireball Work?

#50
post #6

If you have a Mac App or iOS app, Daring Fireball would be a great place to advertise. I'd like to here from some of the web apps that are promoted, do they have a same uptick in subscribers?

Azure Mobile has been a sponsor. I guess at that point it becomes difficult to even extrapolate the impact of the sponsorship...
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