Evening all!
I know you don't have the time to read this article with all the
holiday preparations you have to do (BTW, anybody knows what to give a
34 year old Mac-hating woman, who is far more intelligent then oneself,
for Christmas?), but recently I stumbled over this article by Low End Mac's publisher,
Dan Knight. For more than a year this chap is now trying to make a
living from running a pretty damn good Macintosh site, which is
currently getting more than 800,000 hits per month.
The content is good, the writers are great (apart from that jerk who
writes the UK column), the layout is simple
(and you can read it on low-end Macs). Enough praise: The fact that
struck me rather peculiar was that this site, which serves more ads
that you can shake a stick at, makes not enough money to give this chap
a paycheque, and I am sure that's not due to the expensiveness of the
authors (trust me on that one), but to the low click-rate that the ads
get. Really, when was the last time you clicked on a banner? Think
about that, all of you out there who think they can make a living with
the World Wide Web.
To rake in 800,000 hits per month, your site really has to be either
an established class act like lowendmac.com or offer pornography (or be
Microsoft's update server, where millions of Microsoft minions have to
log on for their latest update to get their crappy OS finally working).
For comparison, my own brilliant sites - Mattbianco.com, Dirkpilat.com, and thepilum.com - were serving 1,300 hits at
most per month (and hey, this is class we are talking about. Well, not
quite. Well, they're crap really. But still...)!
So what in the world do you have to do to make a living from a site
that gets 800,000 hits per month? Weeeeelll, there's the dreaded
micropayment idea, that would take a cent of your credit card every
time you read one of my articles (although they're obviously worth much
more), but in the age of cybercrime and credit card fraud, I rather not
spread my credit cards anymore.
Then there is the good old subscription system, but that would
obviously reduce readership by about 800,000. So for poor Dan Knight,
there's a lot to think about, and maybe he shouldn't give up the
day-job that quickly....
Anyway, I wish you all a great 2002 and a peaceful holiday .
Cheers me Dears 
