Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about?
I don't find this specific post terrible, but I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details.
When the most I get from an About page is "I’ve been working and training to be the most skilled strategist of our era." and "I worked as an entrepreneur from 2004 to 2008.", meh ... pass.
> Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about?
Nah, that's a common enough reaction. Me, I dropped out of two high schools, was able to pick up an alternative high school diploma at age 16 or so anyways, got a near full ride scholarship to UMass Amherst at 17, left there at 19, have held down a variety of self-employed or owned gigs in contracting, project management, sales, marketing, logistics, and a whole variety of other things. Studied business at Boston University later, paid cash for everything. Lived, worked, or traveled through 40+ countries, been around Asia the last 15 months. My last work was in hospitality/tourism. I'll make at least $65,000 this year (just inked a $65,000 contract, but the cash isn't in the bank yet so no partying yet), maybe a lot more depending.
> I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details.
That's totally fair. I've written hundreds of posts - did you go through any of them? I've written detailed guides on lots of stuff, lots of personal experiences.
This is actually a tricky thing about writing, you never know which piece you write will be the first one someone sees. You write a heavily assertive one, someone thinks you're a jerk. You write an introspective one, someone thinks you're narcissistic. You talk about what you've done, people think you're bragging. You don't talk about what you've done, people think you're full of hot air.
...occupational hazard with writing, I guess. I don't take it personally :)
What I imagine is troubling to most is your claim to entrepreneurship skill, but your lack of anything derived from it. 2009 and 2010 were both losing years for you. June 2010 you only had 9k in the bank (related post about your goals for the next few years).
Especially since this community is based squarely on entrepreneurship, I think "money talks, bullshit walks" is especially relevent to the typical HN user.
Also, probably not the same for most people, but I do not understand much about your first paragraph filled with many extra details that don't excite me (full ride to umass, 65k this year, paid cash for everything in Boston, etc). I dont think that explains who you are (well, some might say braggart) or what you're about.
I have never met you, but I know many users here have and every single one vouches for your credibility. That is something I believe in.
> I dont think that explains who you are (well, some might say braggart) or what you're about.
Yeah, this is classical "rock and a hard place" thing. Someone asks, "Who does this jerk think he is?" You can write a factual answer, and you come across either boring or as a braggart. You can write a flippant answer and you come across cheeky. You can ignore it and come across aloof. It's surprisingly hard to answer well when someone calls you out in an unfriendly way.
If you want to know my personal interests, my favorite thing in the world is scubadiving, I like electronic music quite a lot and was just at a bar with a great DJ here in Saigon, my favorite piece of music in the world is Dvorak's 9th Symphony, I like guns a lot (this is partially an American thing, Europeans need not be alarmed), I snowboard, I'd like to travel to every place in the world, I read a ton of books... I'm a natural introvert, but I like people. Yeah, I'm aiming to be the greatest strategist of this generation. I reckon it'll take me another 20-25 years to get there.
> I have never met you, but I know many users here have and every single one vouches for your credibility. That is something I believe in.
Thanks. I think I'm a decent guy, but I rub some people the wrong way. But I mean, I knew I'd do that when I started. I write pro-wealth, pro-ambition, pro-winning, pro-excellence, pro-individualism, etc, etc, etc. That really bothers some people. Like, a lot. But it's also why my site got relatively popular relatively quickly - there's just not many places like that.
I did a brainstorm a while back - I asked, how could I reach people that were just interested in what I have to say without rubbing people who don't want to hear it the wrong way? I don't want to antagonize who doesn't like what I have to say. Of course not... but I couldn't really find any way to write my site, share it with people who are interested, and have people who aren't interested not find it.
I guess that's the nature of things - you take strong positions, you get criticized. Bothered me a little at first honestly, but you get over it pretty fast. When someone criticizes someone they don't know except via online, they're replying to their idea of you, not you yourself... it's just the nature of things. With some acclimation, the criticism isn't so bad, and you get to do some interesting stuff and meet some interesting people. Worth doing overall, definitely.
That's what rubs me the wrong way: that kind of phrase is a throwaway. You're pro-winning. Great. Until I read your blog, I was a firm believer in losing? Maybe it was because I was striving to be as mediocre as possible, rather than... "excellent"?
I'm not trying to be a wiseass (well, maybe a little), but do you see what I'm getting at?
> That's what rubs me the wrong way: that kind of phrase is a throwaway. You're pro-winning. Great. Until I read your blog, I was a firm believer in losing? Maybe it was because I was striving to be as mediocre as possible, rather than... "excellent"?
Actually, maybe not you, but I think a lot of the modern world is fundamentally anti-excellence. Maybe America less than most places, but a lot of the world Tall Poppy Syndrome going on -
A Swedish friend of mine is a talented mathematician, professional poker player, and was a highly competitive athlete before a shoulder injury derailed him. He said he got all kinds of negativity and abuse and people really hating him for what he did, despite the fact that he's like the nicest, kindest, friendliest person I know. He says they have this phrase for it in Sweden -
So yeah. I think a lot of the world is actually anti-winning, anti-excellence. Look how rich are always portrayed in movies. They're always the bad guys. Look at how the star players get booed. Look at how people cheer against the New York Yankees just because it's a successful and extremely well-run organization that wins.
> I'm not trying to be a wiseass (well, maybe a little), but do you see what I'm getting at?
I understand. Most people don't realize that things are like this because it's so normal. But if you seriously break the mold and go counter-mainstream/counter-culture, you're going to get serious abuse from people. Almost everyone that breaks the mold does. I think that's garbage, that ambition should be celebrated, that achievement should be celebrated, etc.
I also spend a lot of time working on various time tracking and habits and reading lots of science and things like that, but that more pedestrian stuff never really gets spread around the internet - so if you only see my site on an occasional one that climbs HN or Twitter retweet, you're probably seeing the more controversial/aggressive stuff. I'm a believer in hard work and putting the time in too, I'm not a fan of rah-rah-go-go.
But to answer your question, yeah, I think a lot of the world is fundamentally anti-excellence, anti-standing-out. And I think that's bad.
>Look at how the star players get booed. Look at how people cheer against the New York Yankees just because it's a successful and extremely well-run organization that wins.
Don't confuse a distaste for egomania with a hatred of achievement. People don't boo the guy who comes from nowhere, works his ass off, and remains humble despite success. People boo hubris.
Actually, maybe not you, but I think a lot of the modern world is fundamentally anti-excellence. Maybe America less than most places, but a lot of the world Tall Poppy Syndrome going on -
Yes, a lot of the world is at least ambivalent about personal excellence. I think most of the world is trained in school to do enough to plausibly cover their ass and stay out of trouble. That makes them good cogs in the burgeoning machinery of society, but useless to an entrepreneur.
I notice this a lot in music. Many people in America think it's more important to praise some kid for doing some worthless flubbery musical thing than it is to just appreciate good music. If you just be sincere and applaud for what you really like (as opposed to what gets your attention while you try to talk over the music) your kid might pick up on and be inspired by your passion for music. Applauding for any old flubbery thing just to bolster self esteem just teaches kids that it's all bullshit, fake, and you're trapped in a suburban put-on devoid of real meaning.
My advice would be to find a better way to capture that spirit than "winning! excellence! to infinity and beyond!", which to me at least, just sounds corny.
Like many people here, I don't fit into a mold at all, but am pretty comfortable with my life and with most people I deal with. Maybe it comes with age.
With sports, at least, I think people like to see the underdog win because the idea of "sport" isn't just about who's best on paper. For instance, with cyclists, there is an impressive array of physiological tests they take, but it's more fun to watch the races, rather than simply decide, say, the Tour de France over who has a bigger VO2 MAX in the lab.
"My advice would be to find a better way to capture that spirit than "winning! excellence! to infinity and beyond!", which to me at least, just sounds corny."
Not sure how much of Sebastian's work you've read, but none of it really comes across as corny.
It's hard to describe the "point" of his blog. His writings really are all over the place, but almost every single one is legitimately interesting and contains some unique or novel insight.
I think because the topics are so diverse, when you end up simplifying it to "pro-winning" it sounds a little "eh." But if you actually read it, you start to understand what he means.
Might you consider picking your battles a little better? His sole purpose is motivating others to achieve excellence. I'm not sure what you stand to gain by continuing to pick on a guy whose biggest crime is corniness.
I'm not "picking a battle" or trying to belittle Sebastian, I'm just giving him my honest opinion of how he comes across, which I think 1) he can handle, and 2) is perhaps doing him a favor.
I'm not saying anything I wouldn't say to his face.
>but I think a lot of the modern world is fundamentally anti-excellence.
The world isn't as black-and-white as you're indicating here. People are skeptical of the rich guy because for so long the main way to get rich was to rob people. Some rich people still get rich that way today. Many others don't do anything illegal but they're not nice people and aren't what I would call "excellence" by any stretch.
As for booing stars, I think that's usually jealousy and ignorance. They don't understand why he/she is making that much, how long the stars career can be compared to, say a banker or investor.
Sweden, also, isn't about "anti-excellence" it's about the group over the individual. It may be one's opinion that that's the same thing but we really are all in this together (Note: I don't agree with the Swedish approach, I simply don't dismiss it out of hand).
>I think that's garbage, that ambition should be celebrated, that achievement should be celebrated, etc.
I agree, except in my opinion the ends don't necessarily justify the means. For example, if you make money but do by creating no value, less value than would have been provided otherwise or actual negative value then I don't think that should be celebrated, it should be opposed and discouraged.
Well said. Another metaphor for this is the crab bucket. If you've ever seen a bunch of crabs boiled in a bucket, you'll notice that don't have to use lids. If a crab tries to escape the other crabs pull it back down. This is often used as a metaphor for the slums.
Not sure if anyone is following this any more, but good questions here -
> Who was was the greatest strategist of the previous generation?
Of the last, say, 50 years? It's certainly debatable. Depends on what field.
You probably know most of most of the excellent business strategists in finance and technology. For statesmen, probably Deng Xiaoping or maybe Lee Kuan Yew.
It's a subjective thing, like "best painting" or "best painter" - you could put metrics to it or rankings or something, but in the end it's all subjective.
> Rommel was a great strategist. Is it better to be Rommel or to hurt fewer people and to be forgotten?
Actually, interesting you chose Rommel. Rommel was executed by the Nazis (forced suicide, technically) for being part of the plot to overthrow Hitler. I think it's fair to say that if that plot had been better executed, then millions of lives would be saved. So that's the flipside - better strategy can save millions of lives as well.
For what it's worth, Rommel is a hell of a comparison -
Super honorable guy. Was opposed to war crimes, opposed to the Holocaust, opposed slave labor, believed Hitler should be arrested and tried for crimes and replaced... he's the only member of the Third Reich leadership with a memorial or museum in Germany (he has both).
But anyways, it's kind of a false dichotomy. The Romans had an expression - "Si vis pacem, para bellum" - "If you want peace, prepare for war" - I do believe in that, and sometimes - like Hitler blitzkreiging Europe or Saddam invading Kuwait - military action is necessary. But it's never desirable if avoidable.
Could you maybe share some posts in which you've described your previous self-employed successes? Anything which gives readers an idea of how you went about creating a business would probably be of interest to HN readers. Even if it's only a moderately profitable life-style business, it would still give ideas to those who want to take the path less traveled.
Sure. Actually, I'd like to write on business more, but I find the quality of writing on business already is pretty high. I try to cover uncharted ground with my writing, but a lot of my stories are pretty straightforward and mundane.
Like, I once hired a sales guy on salary with no commission. I recommend that you don't do that. He would work pretty hard, but after he got a sale then... nothing would happen for like a week or two, it's like he was "done" - or something. But anyways, that's commonly known and understood, writing about it is just reinventing the wheel. For sales people, pay them mostly on results if possible, not on base compensation.
If you ever have anything specific I can help you with, drop me a line - I'm pretty open to people reaching out to me, much moreso than average I think. I take a lot of questions, spend a lot of time with people to lend a hand. I try to do that for entertainment time instead of surfing the net or playing games or watching tv - so if you ever have specific questions or I can help you, drop a line. If I have experience, I'll share it on what you're working on. If not, I can try to call some people I know and see if they know. So yeah, drop a line if there's specific questions and I can help.
Of course he doesn't need to prove anything. Likewise, HN users don't need to read everything or find equal value in everything on the site. It's about interest, not obligation.
Am I being pretentious or unfair for wondering what on earth this blog or author is about?
No. Perfectly reasonable question.
lionhearted may or may not have a "track record of success", but he does have a track record here on hn. For every x weird posts, he has a real gem, something that no one else has mentioned that really gets you thinking. Also, he is more likely that almost any other poster to "push the envelope", bring up something that runs counter to the group think often found here.
If he posts something I don't get in the first 3 sentences, I just hit the back button and decide to read him some other day. It's usually worth it.
Some people, in order to hit a few home runs, have to strike out every once in a while too.
J.K. Rowling once said, "It is impossible to live without failing at something, unless you live so cautiously that you might as well have not lived at all. In which case, you fail by default."
If you're going to speak with authority, you want to establish some sort of credibility and the About page here fails to do that. I think the author has a great handle on aspirational "made-for-hackernews" linkbait but I'm not sure I want to read strategy advice from someone who has no obvious history of implementing strategy.
I was wondering the same thing. It's not to say I'm dismissive of Sebastian's thoughts -- this particular one actually kind of resonates with me -- but I do find that his posts lack perspective. Compared to Derek Sivers' posts, for example, Derek always presents his thoughts as lessons learned wrt CD Baby and ties them to some aspect of his business.
In other words, I'm not saying Sebastian's content is necessarily bad (some of it is quite good), but I would like to see him focus on improving his writing style a bit.
This is just one of those cheap, direction-less advice blogs that hopes to get a book deal. "My goals for the short term are to get back to doing productive freelancing work for good people while finishing up my first book."
I don't think that's fair to the author. It's an ad hominem that shouldn't have any place whatsoever on HN.
At least this guy is out there sticking out his neck and taking a chance. I might disagree with what he has to say (I usually do), but I have no right to judge him either way and I think that neither do you.
Every serious writer wants a book deal. If he makes a "direction-less advice blog" to do it and manages to write decent stuff once in a while then more power to him.
What I'm trying to say is that argue with him on the basis of content and where he's wrong instead of taking pot shots at him. It's healthier and a saner way, because both of you might just learn something out of this.
I may have been a little harsh, but I'm not sure how I could take anyone's advice seriously if I knew ultimately they just wanted me to pay attention long enough to sell me something.
If this guy helps people, then awesome. However, the practice of bookblogmarketing still sucks.
The process of giving away something of value completely for free, completely optional for you to read, in hopes of creating an audience for a book (which takes a lot of work to write, hopes to improve the world in some way, and is also completely optional for you to read) sucks? What do you say about things that actually suck?
May be it's just me but I tend to value "authority/expert/background" less and judge the actual delivered content by itself. Trusting content by its "background" is just intellectually lazy. Question authority. That's part of critical thinking I've learned long time ago.
Lionhearted (Sebastian) has delivered outstanding insights time and time again. Many thing he said has struck a chord with me. One of his best blogs was that it takes many ordinary writings to hit a gem piece. And he certainly practices that.
Yeah the lack of credentials is troubling.
Still, the anecdotes were interesting--the author's change in pay just by asking I found pretty entertaining.
Again though, it would be nice to actually know that the author is "successful". These anecdotes lose some credibility if hes living out of a one-bedroom basement apartment at the time of writing.
Credentials don't mean too terribly much unless you're looking at a star who has hit multiple home runs. Sure, their advice is great because you know there is some well-earned experience in it, but that doesn't automatically make everyone else useless. I don't like separating people between winners and losers. There is so much valuable insight to gain from people who haven't succeeded yet and those who have flat-out failed, if you only listen to winners, you're only getting part of the story.
My friend works at a bar so I go in there twice a week for lunch. I've been going for years so I've gotten to know most of the staff. When I ask them what their plans are for the future, no one says to be the best waiter around. These people get looked at as waiters, but that is not how they view themselves. They are in-transit, they are on their way.
When I look at someone like Sebastian, I see someone who is articulate, intelligent, and genuinely helpful to people around him. I like those qualities and that makes me at least willing to check out what he has to say. Other people have different priorities and that is fair. But I'd rather look at the person rather than just the body of work because behind every great success is someone who was a nobody, perhaps even your waiter.
> if you only listen to winners, you're only getting part of the story
You also often don't get quite the right story, since not everything a successful person says about their own success is accurate. Sometimes there's a bit of self-mythologizing, but even without active attempts to mislead, sometimes people just aren't that good at analyzing the causes of even their own success. They're usually interesting to listen to, but people who are good observers can also be interesting to listen to.
i agree wholeheartedly, especially about the self-mythologizing. Not only might a person be unaware of the steps leading to their own success, they might intentionally conceal those steps.
I forget exactly where it was that I read it, but when researching the Y Combinator program it was mentioned that the time spent with established entrepreneurs at weekly dinners (time spent off the record) was so valuable specifically because of how heavily these people must normally censor themselves.
It doesn't matter. The guy reflects a mentality that I like.
I pretty much feel the same way he does about "needing" money. I can't say it made me successful, but it certainly makes me have some respect for myself.
"What's my name? Fuck you, that's my name. You know why, mister? Because you drove a Hyundai to get here tonight; I drove an $80,000 BMW. That's my name."
Point being that when it comes to making money, no verifiable list of achievements with sources is necessary: the kind of car you drive (as a proxy for how much money you make) should be credentials enough.
Sure, always consider the source. Then again, considering the content, I read: You don't make much money from ads on a blog, and you can often get more money out of a deal by asking for it. You don't have to be an SV baller to convince me of that.
They are infinitely nested comments. You can reply to directly to any comment, and the members here will not be confused by the reordering of sibling comments, trust me.
On a related note, it's really interesting to see how people act when they know they can't motivate someone with money.
For example, I used to do client work, but stopped (because I hate it) a few years ago after I sold my design firm. On my blog's contact form I specifically say that I don't do any consulting work, but I still get emails at least once or twice per week from people who want to hire me for iPhone work. I always politely refuse, and thank them for the consideration. Sometimes they'll reply saying "we have a large budget" or something like that, and I'll reply again saying, thanks, but no thanks, it's not about the money. As soon as I say that magical phrase, they just don't know what to say or do because they're used to motivating designers/developers with money. It's actually an interesting sociological situation.
It's very, very nice to see this article vs. the salary negotiations one [1].
Over there, Jaques mentions that a lot of people suck asking for more money because they just love their job the way it is. Which is kind of a failure if you're on the low end of the pay scale, but this particular thread here shows that it actually ends up being a good thing in the end.
IF (big..) you end up in a job that you love and that compensates you enough (not talking about endless greed here..), you're probably among the happiest people out there. Hats off to you guys and I love the "stick to things I love instead of selling myself" attitude.
What does that mean, "goes from nods to nudges"? It seemed like some idiom I didn't know, so I googled the phrase 'nods to nudges'. However, this very Hacker News page was the only result, so I am still in the dark.
I love this analogy. I was scratching my head at refusing $10k/per day (I can understand it logically, but can't quite grok it), but once you said that I got it totally :-)
Probably not, that'd involve me quitting a job that I love (that I don't need the money from) and I also wouldn't have time to work on my own projects, which are my favorite thing to do in the world. Of course I don't really need the money, so I'm sure others' mileage will vary.
Given 200 working days a year for that type of arrangement (assuming down time between contracts) we're talking about $2mm a year. Far less than a well executed startup could net. (And for someone demanding $10k a day, I assume that (s)he'd have a fairly high chance of attaining it.)
Also: Fuck slavery. Nobody has the right to my life. I'll help the poor, but it isn't because I'm responsible for them, it is because I can empathize or sympathize with their condition and the relative cost of helping them is negligible.
You can also improve the lives of those around you by being a happy and fulfilled person. In the end it doesn't really make any sense to treat life as an ethical math equation. There will always be something more you could do for others no matter how much you give away.
It all really boils down to a question of what your preferences are. Do you want to save 9 peoples' lives each day or do you want to have a somewhat more enjoyable work environment?
"There will always be something more you could do for others no matter how much you give away." This argument becomes irrelevant once you boil things down to a question of preferences.
That's why he used the word, "might." Some people wouldn't feel a moral responsibility to pull a toddler back out of the path of a speeding bus; but many people would--and if flyosity is one of the latter, he might appreciate being made aware of the situation and his personal abilities vis-a-vis the pulling.
Well I was more thinking in terms of the discussion at hand - does one have (or, 'might there be') a moral responsibility to change a life's direction (new career) when one can make much more money that can then be used to help others. In that context, I am vehement that there is no such responsibility.
Pull a toddler out of that path of a bus - I'm not sure, I think so, but I'm not sure; I don't have a rational reason for it that can be derived from my moral axioms. I don't care very much either at this point, it's a different discussion I think (or at least a discussion much further down a sliding scale). For the case presented, I do have a strong opinion about, and felt offended at the thought that someone would suggest there is such a responsibility. Which is why I responded.
For what it's worth I also don't believe in morality in enough of a way for you to reasonably get offended. I don't believe in the existence of a responsibility but I believe people often act as if they have such responsibilities anyways. My beliefs are way more meta than my comment indicated which was simplified given the short amount of time I spent writing it and a perceived possible lowest common denominator audience.
Pretend I said "something like a moral responsibility" or "an important intuitive one sense that one action is better than another action". There is no such thing as a moral responsibility.
The two situations are hard to reconcile because your moral axioms are an attempt to make a simple, coherent system starting from your moral intuitions; but your moral intuitions do not actually arise from a simple, coherent system.
In the case presented, the only differences from the toddler's are the time required to save the lives, and the psychological availability of the lives saved.
Unless your moral intuitions and/or moral axioms allow lower levels of responsibility for suffering which is easier to ignore, the "time required" is the only escape.
If you lived in a world where toddlers were perpetually falling under busses in front of you, would you be morally obligated to stay in good physical condition and pay attention to nearby toddlers so you could save more of them? If not, you should be safe from the responsibility to maximize your income and use the surplus to save lives.
That question has no meaning. Morality is not something you can enforce. Morality is a strictly personal matter, and anyone that tells you that you have a moral responsibility to do something is confused. Nobody can tell you what your moral responsibilities are other than yourself.
In this light, the parent post is right. "You might have a moral responsibility" implies that you may feel compelled to do something. The frequent misinterpretation is that you have a responsibility to someone else, which is false. If you feel compelled to carry on a job you hate to save lives, you have a moral responsibility. If you do not feel so compelled, you do not have a moral responsibility. You cannot have a moral responsibility without feeling compelled.
Oh this is very much a contested position (known as 'objective' vs 'relative' morality). If I feel that murdering people with red hair is morally neutral, or positive even, is it so? I posit that it's not - murder is objectively morally wrong, no matter the ideas or feeling of being compelled of anyone.
To phrase it in your terms, I think everybody has a moral responsibility not to murder people, even if they feel compelled to do so.
UI design & development for a small marketing software company. All my friends work here, 20' ceilings, great vibe, foosball, free reign over what I work on, huge windows, I could go on. If I quit then I wouldn't be able to hang out with my friends or geek out at lunch, I'd just be sitting at my house by myself :)
I like how you emphasize huge windows. A lot of people I've worked and am studying with don't seem to value natural light much. In fact, many hurry to close the blinds only to turn on artificial lighting on. Why???! I personally find large open windows very inspiring and conducive to work, and generally feel lethargic and depressed if the sky is overcast (this is partly to blame for moving out of Vancouver).
close the blinds only to turn on artificial lighting on. Why???!
Generally, I don't do this, I like natural lighting when appropriate, but I will do exactly that if the sun is creating glare on the screen I am working with, or if I am facing straight into the sun. Similarly, I would do it if I am dealing with sensitive data.
I spent a Spring/Summer working in an open floor office with floor-to-ceiling windows looking out over San Mateo and SF Bay. Man, that was a productive time, 75F and sunny just always puts me in a good mood. I love having a view as well, to inspire the mind.
A lot also depends on the context of $10,000 per day. Yes, it's a fair bit if it's a situation where the $10K/day captures all the time you spend on the client including most prep work, travel, and so forth.
But for some types of consulting, you actually spend a relatively small amount of your time "on the clock" and lots of time gathering information, talking to people, formulating your thoughts, marketing yourself in various respects. In a prior job, $10K per day for an on-site consulting session (or a speech, etc.) was actually a pretty typical fee for that type of work but you did relatively few such engagements and sent a lot of time doing things for which you didn't get paid--or got paid a fair bit less--that were nonetheless necessary to being able to command the $10K per day.
(That rate is also getting in roughly the ballpark of high-end lawyers and similar professionals with the difference that they charge you for much more of the background work.)
Absolutely. I think a lot of people hear $10,000 per day and mentally multiply it by 100 or 200 or whatever and go "WOW, that's a whole lot of money every year." But in a lot of situations, it's as you say.
> I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads.
And then he goes on to list a bunch of tech entrepreneurial writers. Well I hate to break it to you, but those are not the definition of "the absolute-highest-quality writers". Sure they are very good writers, but their secret sauce is that they are great businessmen too, and so their ideas are valuable if they do any reasonably competent job of communicating them.
More importantly, these guys make their money (and a lot of it) elsewhere, so it would be a terrible idea to dilute their brand with cheap ads that were irrelevant to their net worth.
It might very well be true that the best writers don't have ads on their site, but my guess is because you can't really make a lot of money from ads unless your audience is massive, and frankly, the audience for very high-quality writing is disturbingly small. By and large people read for content more than quality—this thesis is supported by the fact that the OA considers entrepundits to be the "absolute best". The absolute best writers are probably people who do it professionally, and to do so professionally requires working for an organization that is extracting the true value out of great writing. That is, either a high-brow periodical, or a book publisher.
Yeah. In particular, Joel's blog is essentially a giant ad for everything Fog Creek makes. Not that that's a bad thing -- I tried Fogbugz because I found it through Joel, was willing to give it a try because I thought highly of his writing, and I'm a happy customer. Still, Joel monetizes his blog by indirectly selling software, not by being gauche and slapping adsense all over the place.
I think that was kind of the point. The only advertising and marketing a blog should be doing is for the author or products the author feels passionate about.
"But as soon as you need money – and people know – you’re hosed."
Sales-wise, this is where most companies fail. Their salespeople let buyers know they need money. And as soon as buyers sniff you out, they make you their bitch. If you're a salesperson - and everybody should be - you lose.
The trick is to work hard on your attitude until you're ready to walk away from every deal without blinking - even if you really need money. It's really counterintuitive - but winner's attitude works.
I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from someone who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy from someone who simply doesn't care. I know that all other things being equal (I mean, assuming I think both companies can actually deliver, at a similar price point, and that one company isn't going to vanish while I still need them.) that's certainly how I feel, when I buy expensive things.
But then, I've pretty much miserably failed to sell any product (other than my time) that was worth, you know, real money per-customer, so this is likely one of those areas where I'm just weird, and another reason why using myself as a model for generalizing human behavior is a bad idea.
Personally, I focus on selling a whole lot of little things, mostly because I've utterly failed to sell big things, and I've met some success selling lots of little things. Obviously, $10/month is not going to make or break me... and if I spend a lot of time on any one sale, obviously, I'm not going to end up with an acceptable hourly rate, especially as I have some significant marginal costs that come out of that $10 before it can be spent on my salary. But I think it's important, to some extent, to still treat people like customers; yeah, the accountant won't even notice if that customer quits next month. But if more people quit than sign up? or if that customer quits and then loudly complains in public about my bad service?
The customer isn't always right, but dealing with customers you don't want as customers is a delicate art. I'm certain that if I took an insulting attitude towards the customers I didn't want, it'd end badly for me rather quickly. So it seems to me like this issue is... complex. You want to appear to care, but you don't want to appear desperate, and the line between those two, much like the line between confidence and arrogance, can be pretty blurry (at least to someone as socially unskilled as myself.)
I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from someone who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy from someone who simply doesn't care.
I think the biggest factor is trust. If the salesperson desperately needs the sale, it's hard to trust what they say. They're more motivated to make a sale that they can't deliver on because they have no choice.
> I never understood this. I always thought that you'd rather buy from someone who is likely to go out of their way to serve your needs than to buy from someone who simply doesn't care. I know that all other things being equal (I mean, assuming I think both companies can actually deliver, at a similar price point, and that one company isn't going to vanish while I still need them.) that's certainly how I feel, when I buy expensive things.
The idea is the person who's desperate for money is more likely to provide a cheap service, while the person who's not is more likely to provide a top notch service, because he has more respect for himself and would never want to be caught delivering garbage.
>The idea is the person who's desperate for money is more likely to provide a cheap service, while the person who's not is more likely to provide a top notch service, because he has more respect for himself and would never want to be caught delivering garbage.
huh. see, my thought is always "We're the phone company, we don't care because we don't have to." I know many people go through great pains to avoid dealing with the phone company. Do you use AT&T DSL? I use sonic.net. I mean, yeah, T owns the layer1, but the whole experience is quite a bit more pleasant when I don't have to deal with the T.
I've heard some people explain that companies, generally speaking, prefer to deal with other companies that are similar in size; It makes sense to me, at least in cases where I expect non-automated customer service.
Giant oligopolies are unpleasant to deal with for their own reasons. You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are desirable/successful enough to pick and choose your partners.
These strategies take advanage of humans' built-in decision making and survival heuristics. Women like a man who's already taken because they can assume that his current mate has already extensively vetted him for desirability. Anyone who smells desperate trips alarms and gets you wondering why they can't find a mate / job /client.
There's a fine line between putting your best foot forward and cynically manipulating everyone around you of course. Robert Cialdini's book "Influence" shows you where the line is and how to stay on the clean side.
>You want to appear indifferent to any particular sale for the same reason that playing hard to get works in dating: It implies that you are desirable/successful enough to pick and choose your partners.
But, I thought that traditionally, that was only supposed to work with women. Men, from my understanding, seem to place a higher value on the physical attractiveness of their mates, and a lower value on the perceived social status of their mates.
Not that I'm an expert on selling or dating; it's just that most of the dating advice I've seen women given has to do with becoming more physically attractive, rather than the advice given to men, which seems to be about raising one's perceived social status. I mean, it could be that the advice (or my perception of that advice) is wrong, but it lines up with my personal observations.
This ignoring the vast differences between initiating short-term relationships and maintaining a long-term relationship, and the differences between selling a product and initiating a relationship.
(Oh, and thanks for being a customer. This is what I've always wanted to do.)
You should read (a synopsis of) The Rules. It's the female equivalent to the PUA craze, and it focuses on consistently acting like a high-value mate.
The idea is that a man with a passing interest in you will slowly convince himself that you are worth striving for and when he finally "wins" your hand he will feel like he has successfully proven himself and earned something he dearly wanted.
It's an implementation of the idea that things you work for are dearer to you than things that come your way with little effort.
There are different types of service. If your time is valuable (I.E. you have money), you want to hire someone, who already knows what you want, what you need, and how to deliver it. Now, assume you have such a product.
Then, you talk to potential customers, and you tell them what you are offering. If somebody calls up, and asks for something stupid, you don't do it for them. Obviously, if somebody discovers a problem with something, you fix it. Obviously, if you realize a lot of customers need something, you probably want to add it to what you offer.
The point is that you have your own quality standards. So, your customers know when they deal with you, they can expect a certain quality. If you are just desperate to do whatever your customers tell you, you will have no quality standard, and you will need to ask a million questions.
People often ask for things they don't really want. You want to understand your customers better than they know themselves.
I've been in sales for years and the best way to describe this attitude is with a question. "If their good/service is really worth what they're asking, why are they trying so hard to make this sale?" When you can walk away, the client implies from that that you're successful, and therefore offering a quality product people want.
The "don't need money" attitude sends out a "social-proof" signal that the stuff being sold is in high demand, which translated into it's of high quality and worth buying.
It's similar to the pricing signal of a high-priced product. The buyer takes all these signals into consideration when buying.
You can see this attitude in Apple. They sell their products at relatively high prices. You can always hear it from Steve Jobs: we're not gonna produce crap that sell cheap.
When you think you're desperate for money, you become cheap, and you will produce garbage.
I think it's also why 37signals has this mantra about always saying No to feature requests. They're not desperate for more customers; they'd rather make a top notch product instead.
I wrote three comments for this and didn't post any of them, so I obviously have something to say, if I can just get it out :)
I think Sebastian is actually answering a different question than he sets out to answer. What I think he's answering is "How do I be cool with what goes on my blog?"
If so, it was a pretty long and roundabout way of answering.
I usually like Sebastian's work, I just felt this one article had a lot of opinion and a lot of text but not a lot of depth or analysis. It was strangely unsatisfying and frustrating.
AdBlock-Plus has made ads virtually irrelevant for me. Sometimes I forget that people are even subjected to them.
Last year, while traveling through eastern Asia, I would occasionally drop by an internet cafe. I couldn't believe the amount of ads non-ABP users had to see. It still baffles me.
Getting content for free because advertisers are paying for it is pretty great, though, right? As Heinlein would say, there's no such thing as a free lunch...
I turn ABP off for domains that have made it a point to never have abusive ads (popovers, moving, flashing, expanding, generally being a nuisance). I'd highly recommend this to others. The advertising economy is crucial to maintaining free (as in beer) access to information on the internet, and complete rejection of it is just going to mean more paywalls in the future.
I don't mind banner ads or text ads so long as they are neither deceptive (mixing ad content with real content or masquerading as such) nor abusive (flashing! look at me! you're the 1 millionth visitor! tiny dismiss buttons, or worse, no dismiss buttons!)
I don't think it's my responsibility to ensure third-party companies' business models work. I have a TCP pipe open to a remote web server; however I manipulate the data after it has come out of that TCP pipe is up to me, providing I don't violate copyright etc. Trying to prop up businesses in spite of economic forces - free-riding in this case - is usually pointless. Economic forces are too powerful; it's a waste of effort. It's better to work on more sustainable models that aren't as weak.
Even in a completely self-serving frame of mind you may want to "prop up" a business model.
The idea is that either you look at some ads, or you pay directly for content. Moral or issues of principles aside, that's simply the way it will go. Personally, I choose to look at ads instead of paying for content, but that's a personal preference.
If you don't like paywalls it would benefit you in the long term to turn off adblockers for sites that "behave".
Really? There's a "third way" to pay for content... reputation. This, in fact, is how the original article was paid for, I think. The author felt the value added to his reputation was greater than the value of the time spent writing.
This is also how most technical books are paid for. Most technical book authors make a small fraction of what they could make as contractors from writing technical books; yet the books still get written... why? Reputation. Nothing improves your reputation quite like being a widely read.
I don't think this scales to any large fraction of the content that is being created right now, though. It does work for some, but I doubt this will become the way things are done on a large scale.
Reputation is the primary means whereby creators of nearly all the content I consume on a daily basis are remunerated. Blog posts? Tech books? I doubt very much that there are many people who do either for the money directly earned through ad or book sales.
Now, I agree that this model doesn't work for, say, big-budget action movies and for many (maybe, as you say, most[1]) other media types.
But, these people working for "free" have always been a big part of the press; I don't think that writing has ever paid particularly well, except for a few at the very top.
Edit:
There is a corporate equivalent to this that dominates the trade magazine industry. Corporations write something very much like a press release advertising their new product, and send it off to a writer for the magazine, who publishes it, perhaps with a few changes, as if it were a story. Hell, speaking of high-budget action flicks, BMW did something similar a while back; they released a series of short action films[2] that featured their vehicles. Being something of a fan of action films myself, I rather enjoyed them, even though they were obviously commercials.
[1] Thinking more on what "more media" is, I'm starting to come around to your position. Now, I certainly spend /more time/ consuming media like blog posts or technical books where the author was primarily remunerated in terms of an increased reputation compared to media produced for the money.
However, even if you say I spend 100 hours reading tech books or blog posts for every 1 hour I spend watching big-budget action flicks, that one hour of action movie probably took more human hours to produce than the 100 hours of tech book or blog post. Of course, if you measure the the cost of production divided by the number of people watching it, then it's possible that the flashy action movie was actually cheaper to produce than the tech book, I mean, per human hour spent watching the thing.
Indeed, your first footnote is more in line with what I was thinking of. If everybody blocks ads on the things that are expensive to produce (The Atlantic's website, NYT/WSJ/WaPo/CNN/etc, pro-videos, whatever), I doubt that they can just switch to a "reputation" type of model.
Fine for small blogs who don't make much money from ads anyway, but won't work for pro-site with big teams and big expenses.
>If everybody blocks ads on the things that are expensive to produce (The Atlantic's website, NYT/WSJ/WaPo/CNN/etc, pro-videos, whatever), I doubt that they can just switch to a "reputation" type of model.
Eh, I think that what value the newspaper houses will have going forward mostly has to do with their reputation, and how they can give legitimacy to a story or author, and how they keep the worst of the dregs out so that us consumers don't need to see them.
As for video news content, last time I was in the cafe with CNN that I frequent, the story (a missing white girl puff piece) was cut with shots of a video camera focusing on a computer monitor that was reloading twitter. I guess I'm not really a video news kind of guy, but I'm not really seeing how an enthusiast could do worse than that. Maybe I haven't spent enough time watching TV news to see the good stuff, but as far as I can tell, it's a wasteland.
Now, video entertainment? the commercial publishing houses still have that sewed up tight.
> Eh, I think that what value the newspaper houses will have going forward mostly has to do with their reputation, and how they can give legitimacy to a story or author, and how they keep the worst of the dregs out so that us consumers don't need to see them.
I'm not sure I follow you. How is reputation supposed to pay the bills? If the newspaper/site can't sell ads anymore, how do they make money?
> As for video news content, last time I was in the cafe with CNN that I frequent, the story (a missing white girl puff piece) was cut with shots of a video camera focusing on a computer monitor that was reloading twitter. I guess I'm not really a video news kind of guy, but I'm not really seeing how an enthusiast could do worse than that. Maybe I haven't spent enough time watching TV news to see the good stuff, but as far as I can tell, it's a wasteland.
Sure there's tons of crap, but that goes for everything. 90%+ of anything is crap, including books, etc, but what about the good part? How do they make money on reputation? That's what I still don't understand. If you are a consultant with a blog, that makes sense, it drives other business. But if your main business is content creation, how does it help if nobody can sell ads and very few can make a living with high subscription fees.
>I'm not sure I follow you. How is reputation supposed to pay the bills? If the newspaper/site can't sell ads anymore, how do they make money?
there are all sorts of ways to earn money from reputation, some being more shady than others.
One path is the public broadcasting model. accept donations from people who support the work you do, and the low cost of distribution becomes an advantage rather than a disadvantage. (would this be sustainable without the government support that NPR gets? I don't know. I'm given to understand that we may find out shortly.)
Is there a conservative equivalent of NPR?
There are all sorts of other ways you can transform reputation in to money. For corporations, the line between buying advertising and giving to charity is quite blurry; there are all sorts of underexploited opportunities along those lines. Sure, people block banner ads, but the 'paid for by corporation X' link or announcement? I think that can create real credibility and real goodwill. My company has spent more money supporting things I want to be associated with than on banner ads because I think it's a more effective way to advertise.
I agree that this can work for some things, but I think we'll have to agree to disagree on whether it can work on anywhere near the scale that ads work on.
Rewarding companies that behave or provide a valuable service is "voting with your wallet", which is the backbone of capitalism.
By using an ad-blocker, offensive websites become less annoying.
Let me put it into context: for every website featuring offensive ads you can find well-behaved websites with similarly or even better content (expertsexchange versus stackoverflow). By using an ad-blocker, you're rewarding the websites with offensive ads or business models - your traffic is still valuable as (for example) you may pass links around, or they may just serve you with commercials hidden in the actual content.
Personally, if a website bothers me that much with ads, then I stop using/reading it. Made me find better content too. That's why I won't be using an ad-blocker any time soon.
I don't consider exposing myself to ads to be a payment. It's more like getting some sand in one's eye, or being stuck in a queue. It's an irritant, a distraction, an annoyance. I loathe animated Flash ads, and that disgust infects my perceptions of brands associated with them. I have never bought anything via a display ad link, ever. To be frank, I almost believe I'm doing the advertisers (in contrast to the content providers) a favour by not letting their ads into my consciousness.
I'd take terms of use more seriously if they were presented as something resembling a real contract with a choice to accept/decline, e.g. they showed me an up-front page with the terms, and made me check that I agreed to them before letting me view the site. Obviously sites don't do this, because they would lose a bunch of readers who would just close the window.
I don't consider fine print buried in a footer that I "implicitly" agree to to be an actual contract.
That's the exact reason I don't use an ad blocker at all. I use the internet with such frequency that I know what is an ad and what is not, and as a result I am pretty much ad-blind with or without an ad blocker. It's been years since I've clicked on an adsense ad for example, but I don't use any adblockers because they provide essentially zero benefit to me but I know they take away a lot of benefit from other people (the people that make money off the ads and use that revenue model to provide free content).
However in this case the missing free lunch may be for anyone with an expectation of making revenue off ads, rather than the people who won't even notice when site X happens to not update too often anymore due to decline in ad revenue, because sites A, B, and C came along and filled that attention gap nicely thankyouverymuch. (And if people do actually care enough to notice and care if site X stops producing, then X doesn't need ad revenue to make content creation profitable)
You do know that there is a special place in hell for ABP users?
On a serious note, I've also pulled out my hair waiting for TechCrunch to load. My solution is to hit Esc as soon as the main content is loaded (or use RSS instead).
If you’re looking to grow in popularity as quickly as possible and the cash you could get from ads doesn’t matter, then yes, go without ads.
It's not one way or the other. You can fall in the middle. You can run ads on a site to only non logged in users or only on posts over a certain age. For a long established blog, just running ads on posts over a month old could still cover 50%+ of the pageviews. I use this "trick" myself and the CTRs are great because it's mostly people coming in from search engines who hit those ads rather than my "regulars" :-)
I like this. I wonder if there's a google-killer in targeting ads at the quality, or type, that suits you? It would build brands both ways, as the article says. Of course, it's not needed at the high-end of BMW et. al., because they already have full-time staff for this stuff; but there's a huge middle-ground between that and the weight loss ads. Now, how to make it convenient and low-cost enough, to bring those benefits to the next tier, who are presently non-consumers of this service, but would love it (like lionhearted here)?
aside: low-cost in this article happen to also be unpleasant; but they needn't coincide. Most disruptions are low-cost (e.g. PCs). They are indeed low-quality, but only with respect to users who already have something better (e.g. mainframes). Google text ads are very low-cost, but also pretty good, especially when related to what you're searching for anyway - this is the idea they copied from (and paid off) overture.com (was: goto.com, now yahoo owns them). I think this was a fantastic idea, even better than google's search, because it aligns everyone's interest, even as it optimizes profit (the auction part).
Re: "needing the money": I recently negotiated my highest ever deal (by a significant integer factor). I did it by pretending I didn't need the money. But I really, really did, so this was... stressful. At the last, I gave in; but I estimate I could have gotten an extra $50,000 or so. Oh well, I still did really well. I prefer the article's plan of not actually needing the money. Fortunately, that deal is very close to putting me in that position.
I believe the reason you see sites without ads as superior on some level is because the absolute-highest-quality writers usually don’t have ads.
Sites like Paul Graham’s, Eliezer Yudkowsky’s, Mark Cuban’s, and Steve Blank’s don’t have advertisements.
I've been subscribed to Cuban's feed for some time now and think he has some interesting things to say on occasion but I wouldn't call him a high quality writer. He's not in the same category as the others listed there.
Few things in the article ring a bell close to me.
1)One being the power to choose things without bothering about the money part is like a drug.
I still remember the time, when I would take design prjects for as cheap as $20 per hour (which for India's standard is not cheap) but I knew I had to build my name and it was a good enough price to pay for a while.
Then I realised that I could do more interesting and challenging personal projects than make sites with no budget and affection for design from the companies' end.
2) “You don’t need the money?” – well, 95%+ of people in the world would like more money. Maybe 99%+.
Well I would say it is 100%. Never come across someone who would say not to money. And no I am not talking moral issues, grey area, lack of time reasons. I am talking reasons where you did not take that money for the sake of not just taking that money.
That power of being able to refuse projects left and right and be very picky is what I cherish the most. I might rather just enjoy a quite night with my girlfriend than slog for some work I don't get a thrill out of.
Blogs are one of the worst monetizing categories of sites; a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads.
Sebastian's site doesn't even show up in quantcast, so Sebastian is probably turning up $2.35 a month in ad revenues, if that.
>a blog has to have a LOT of traffic (like 100k a month) to move the meter, and if you don't get that kind of traffic you're just hurting your credibility by running ads.
I get a quarter of that on my blog, but I'm pretty random and rarely blog. All my ads do is pay the hosting costs for itself and a couple of extra domains that are in perpetual [un]development and maybe if I'm lucky buy me a meal out once a year (at a pretty low class restaurant) - but do people really disrespect me for that?
Personally despite it being cheap I probably couldn't afford to run the blog without ads (for at least another year) and 250k visits p.a. suggests that at least a few thousand folks might be moderately distracted or find worth in my blog.
In your opinion should I stop the blog? (based on this very limited information alone).
It's up to you. I won't think less of you for running ads (I run several non-blog advertising funded sites), but I know that some people would. Paying for your hosting costs is fine, but it's another thing to get paid for your time.
Linda Evangelista is a bad example. She -had- to get out of bed to make money. If she was sick, out of town or otherwise engaged, she couldn't generate revenue. Everything was dependent upon her physically showing up somewhere to do something. Smart people figure out a way to stay in bed and still make the $10k.
Many SaaS/e-Book/App-People think, the money comes in even when they're sick. This might be true for a short period of time but as time changes the value of your work decreases. Let's say you stop working for 6month on your project — usually your sales will collapse.
People bashing freelancers/contractors usually ignore this fact. I for one prefer to get e.g. 10k$/month freelancing instead of 30k$ for an e-book that requires 6month work to write + promote.
I don't find this specific post terrible, but I'm the type who prefers the advice of people with a track record of success–or, at the very least, who have tried and humbly reflect on their failures. With details.
When the most I get from an About page is "I’ve been working and training to be the most skilled strategist of our era." and "I worked as an entrepreneur from 2004 to 2008.", meh ... pass.