Dopp Juice Archive

I want to believe in micropayments.

It’s like Santa Claus, the tooth fairy, the economic stimulus package, predefined timelines for large projects, nonfat lattes, and God. I want to believe in micropayments because it gives me hope…

I’m talking about hope that we’re on the right track. Hope that we have a viable, sustainable alternate plan for the business models we’re turning upside down with our new technology. Hope that we can decentralize power without losing it altogether. Hope that we can survive without the monopolies. Hope that artists will be able make a living just by inspiring people. Hope that the average Internet user will soon derive as much satisfaction from giving financial props to someone they find valuable as they’d get from buying them a beer.

I naively believed we were close to this reality because someone — iTunes — is actually finally doing it well. I believed the biggest barrier was form of payment: if you have to enter your credit card number or go to a separate payment website or do anything that takes more than a click or a few keystrokes, the method won’t catch on.  iTunes broke that barrier for iPhone users when they required us to sign up for an iTunes account (and enter our credit card number in advance) just to download those nifty free apps. We didn’t like entering our credit card number, but it was Apple, so we knew everything was gonna be okay. Now that we’ve done it, whenever we get a song stuck in our heads at 3 AM and decide we need to listen to it right then, all we have to do is enter a password and it’s ours for 99 cents. A password. Just a password!  Anywhere we are.  It’s brilliant.

It was so easy to take it a step further: if Apple can do it, other industries can’t be too far behind.  Heck, we could even let Apple become the new PayPal and run all of our micropayments throught them, since they already have our trust.  Why not?  Let independent artists have their own merchant accounts.  Expand the system to cover writers, filmmakers, painters, and photographers.  Let high school kids make 50 cents each time one of the cool screen savers they create is downloaded.  Let me pay for shareware incrementally based on the number of times I use it.  Let me donate to a nonprofit in small chunks whenever they inspire or move me.  Empower the bloggers to fund each other.  Make it easy for us to put our money where our hearts are.  

I was this close to swallowing the whole story of technological utopia when Clay Shirky — in his infinite clarity — shot it down this morning.

“The essential thing to understand about small payments is that users don’t like being nickel-and-dimed. We have the phrase ‘nickel-and-dimed’ because this dislike is both general and strong.”

So… people don’t like micropayments.  Oh. Right.  (And… now that I think about it, yeah okay, I kinda hate them, too.)

And…

“The lesson of iTunes et al (indeed, the only real lesson of small payment systems generally) is that if you want something that doesn’t survive contact with the market, you can’t let it have contact with the market.  …small payments survive in the absence of a market for other legal options.”

So… iTunes is an aberration that only works because the music industry is kinda screwed up at the moment.

He ends with:

“We should be talking about new models for employing reporters rather than resuscitating old models for employing publishers; the longer we waste fantasizing about magic solutions for the latter problem, the less time we have to figure out real solutions to the former one.”

But Clay!  I wasn’t talking about employing publishers! I want the micropayments to go directly to the reporters!

But okay… fine… you win.  It won’t work for that, either.

So what’s our Plan B?

Coming up on a year of working with Cerado. First time I’ve let a tech contract last that long. And still in love with them.
(via twitter)

Putting together my October invoice for Cerado this morning, I realized this month will mark a year with them.  I’ve been building websites for ten years and living in the Bay Area for four, and this is the first tech contract I’ve let last more than 6 months.

For the last however-many years, I’ve been clinging tightly to the philosophy that if I stay uncomfortable, I’ll grow faster. And I’ve found that shifting jobs every few months is an excellent way to stay uncomfortable. (So is avoiding monogamous relationships, but that’s a can of worms I’ll save for another time.)  I tend to do something for just long enough to learn it, get good at it, and it to my repertoire. Then I arrange for someone else to take my place, and I move on. Why stick around for things to get easy?  I’ve got too much more growing to do.

I’ve been told by various people that at some point, I’ll want to settle down and keep a steady job.  I’ve also been told that I’ll want to get married and have kids.  And that I’ll wish I had my degree.  And that I want to stop working when I’m 65.  And that Pluto’s not really a planet.

That’s nice.

Anyway, my point is: I prefer change to consistency, growth to comfort, and flexibility to structure.  And that’s why I’m still at Cerado.

We do cool stuff, and it’s different every month.   Since being there, I’ve taught airplane mechanics how to use social networking tools; redesigned BlogHer.com; created a monthly newsletter; built a viral online quiz; and managed the development of a new product that’s so fascinating, I’m still not sure I understand it yet (but it works).  It’s kind of like changing jobs every month, only without the “changing jobs” part.

I get to wear all of my hats.  I manage, I write, and I build.  Most firms would probably prefer that I pick one of those and do it consistently. Cerado, on the other hand, thinks it’s pretty cool that I jump around and do whatever I want to do on a project.  When I get to a spot where I need more help, I pick the thing I’m least experienced with and ask Chris to go hire someone for it.  So far, this strategy seems to be working just fine.

I get to do all my other cool stuff, too.  I’m not quite sure how I pulled this one off, but I seem to have landed in a company that thinks the more I do outside of it, the more valuable I am.  So I travel and go to conferences as often as I can, and I just take my work with me on the plane.  Even more miraculously, though, they’re incredibly supportive of my adventures in queerdom and sex geekery, and I’m getting lots of encouragement to make Genderfork, Queer Open Mic, and Boffery successful. This blows my mind.

I get to work with amazing mad geniuses. Hanging out with Chris Carfi and Mark Resch (and all of the other mad geniuses they tend to attract for lunch meetings) has created frequent surges of brilliance and a constant reminder to think.  Example: In the middle of a meeting one afternoon, Mark made a casual comment about something that would make his life easier.  He and Chris immediately jumped on the idea and started working out all the details for how they could design that product and bring it to production within a month.  Five minutes later, they were back on track with the meeting.  I blinked a few times, shook my head, and carried on.

So in case you were wondering why I’m still hanging out with this strange posse, it’s because they’re a perfect fit.

The BlogHer Geek Lab in Washington, DC was loaded with questions about how to improve a blog and increase its reach.  I ended up on my soapbox more times than I expected, ranting about misinformation and imploring bloggers to rethink their strategies.

I’m summarizing most of my rants below because I think they’ll be helpful to some people.  Please keep in mind that I’m coming at this from my own experience.  I’m not an “ad revenue” blogger, and there are plenty out there who can give you tips on what they’ve done to be successful. I encourage you to go talk to them, too.

The Goals Rant

If you ask me, “How can I make my blog better?” I’m going to ask you what “better” means.  What are your goals? If you don’t know, stop whatever you’re doing right now and figure them out.  Here are some common ones:

I want to…

• express myself in a creative, positive way.
• vent my frustrations in a safe and constructive way.
• work through some challenging issues.
• document a process or experience.
• create a space for myself that’s separate from my daily life.
• establish a certain kind of reputation.
• convey a certain tone and aesthetic.
• serve a certain community in a certain way.
• build a community that supports me.
• make money with ads and affiliate revenue.
• find new work/jobs/clients/customers.
• maintain my existing work/jobs/clients/customers.
• give friends and family a way to keep track of me.
• keep track of my thoughts and the interesting things I’ve found on the web.

If you have a lot of these goals (and hopefully some others I haven’t named yet), that’s great!  Now you need to prioritize them. Which ONE do you care about first and foremost? How about second? Third? Fourth? Lay them all out in order — NO TIES! It’s fine if your priorities change in the future, but you need to be honest with yourself about what they are right now.

Once you’ve got that, you’ll know what “better” means. And you’ll probably be able to brainstorm about 20 answers to your original question without any help from me now, too.

The Money Rant

So you want to make money from blogging, and you’ve heard that ad revenue is the way to go.  That’s great and I completely support you, but let’s talk about it for a minute.

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