I have been receiving some comments lately from people who are opposed to me wanting to make money from Daily Cup of Tech. It seems that there is an unwritten rule on the Internet that states:

“Thou shall not benefit from thine hard work when it is related to the Internet!”

Rather than addressing these comments individually, I thought it would be best to respond to each of these issues in one post so that I can clearly lay out where I stand on.

Advertising on DCoT

This is often the first complain that I will hear when it comes to making money with DCoT. People simply do not want to see advertisements. Period. It doesn’t matter if they are one the front page, in a post, in a comment, or in the RSS feed.

I’ve taken a look at a lot of blogs and the vast majority of them have advertising on them. If you go to the top five blogs according to Technorati (Endgadget, Boing Boing, Gizmodo, Techcrunch, and The Huffington Post), each and every one of them have advertising on them. Why should DCoT be any different? I try to limit my advertising and make it relevant so that if there is a product that is being shown to the reader, it is at least something that the reader would find useful.

DCoT has far fewer and less intrusive advertising than many other sites. I refuse to put pop-ups, pop-unders, and interstitial advertisement on Daily Cup of Tech. I also refuse to put on ads that attempt to install components on the reader’s computer.

I also occasionally write a paid or sponsored post about a specific product or service. I always start and finish these posts with a disclaimer that this is a paid post so that there is no confusion that I have received some compensation for writing this post and that it is an advertisement.

Readers need to realize that DCoT is a form of media and that advertising is a part of the media. You see this in magazines, television, radio, etc. Why do people expect the Internet and, more specifically, blogs to be any different?

Asking for Donations

I guess in many ways, this is almost like advertising for myself, but I have received some complaints about writing posts asking for donations to the tip jar or to release the source code. They do not like that I ask for donations on a regular basis and they are annoyed by the posts.

First of all, yes, I do ask for donations. I feel that the time and effort that I put into DCoT is worth some support and recognition. I have expenses to keep the website up. My time is valuable. People do not hesitate to ask me for help with their tech issues. (Granted, I did ask for people to submit their questions to me but they were asking long before I officially offered to answer.) Why should I hesitate to ask for a donation to support the blog?

Second, I do ask on a regular basis. The old adage, “Out of site, out of mind” holds very true on the Internet. There is good reason why you see “Gratuity not included in price” on your restaurant bill and Karma cups at Starbucks. Had I not regularly pointed out that people could help release source code to the Internet or just donate to help keep DCoT running, I would never receive any donations and DCoT would eventually die.

The one things that people don’t mention when they express their opinions about my donation requests is the fact that I also use that opportunity to recognize all of the people who have donated to DCoT in the past week and give them the recognition that they deserve. I think it is very important to shine the spotlight on these people because they understand what I am trying to do here.

What many people don’t seem to realize is that the donations that I receive are a real encouragement to me. There have been at least three or four times that I almost shut down DCoT and then someone would make a donation, even a couple of dollars, and it would change my mind. Not because I’m in it for the money but because I am encouraged by the fact that people feel that my hard work is worth giving up a small portion of the money they have earned from their hard work.

Paying for Source Code

This is an issue that started when I announced my Release the Code concept. In a nut shell, I promised to publish the source code on DCoT for my freeware applications when a certain amount had been donated toward the project. Some people thought that I should not be charging for the source code or that I was charging too much.

First, I am not charging anyone anything for the source code. When people voluntarily donate money to a project, they are doing it out of their own free will. I do not force anyone to pay me anything.

In fact, the vast majority of people who get access to the source code do not pay a single cent for it. For example, as of the writing of this post, over 2,000 people have accessed the recently released source code for DCoT Menu. There were five people who donated to the release of this source code which translates into fewer than 0.25% of the people who got the code paying anything for it. I really do not see how this is unfair to the readers of DCoT.

The other issue that comes up sometimes is that I am charging too much for the source code. In general, I ask US$100 for the source code for my projects. I have never worked or been paid as a coder but I have been a paid consultant in the past. My hourly rate back then varied between US$80 and US$145. Now, the absolute least amount of time that I have spent on one of my projects is seven hours. Based on my lowest consulting rate, my effort was worth at least US$560. All I am asking is US$100.

Also, when you hire a developer to write code for you, they are working for you to generate your product. And you need to pay to get the code. Unless you are one of the people who actually donated toward the release of the code, you haven’t paid a single penny and you have complete access to the source code to do with it whatever you want. I don’t know how much a programmer would to create an application and provide you with the source code but I’m sure it is more than free.

People have also argued that US$100 may be a small amount for someone in North America to pay but what about some people who make significantly less or are from a third world country? I have to admit that the world is not fair but, as I have stated earlier, these people do not have to pay for the code if they do not want it. All they have to do is wait and be patient. I do not know of anyone who is so poor that they cannot afford to be patient.

Readers must also be aware that I have to survive in the market that I live. I can’t convince someone at the grocery store to give me food because I gave away my source code. This is not how the world works and it is naive to believe that it does.

Still Don’t Like These Things?

I understand that there are going to be some people out there who are going to get up in arms about this and I may even lose some readers. So be it. This is how DCoT is being run and I do not apologize for it.

But, if you are truly serious about getting rid of the advertising and the donation requests and you would like all of my applications to be open source and free as soon as I release them, then it is up to you to be my boss. In fact, I am willing to quit my jobs and work on Daily Cup of Tech full time!

The only way that I would be willing to do any of this would be if I had a guaranteed monthly support base that would allow me to replace these other sources of income. With these in place I am willing to drop each of my other income sources one at a time until, eventually, I would be working full time for you, the DCoT readers.

Please do not take this offer lightly as I take this very seriously. I would be willing to put my finances in the hands of you, the readers, if you are willing to support this venture. This is how it would work:

I would accept subscriptions via PayPal (or any other legitimate form of payment) for Daily Cup of Tech. A subscription differs from a donation in that a donation is a one time contribution while a subscription is a monthly contribution. As the subscription number increases, I will start to make changes to Daily Cup of Tech and my life.

These are the changes that I would be willing to make in order as subscriptions increase:

1. Removing DCoT Discounts
2. Removing Text Link Ads
3. Removing ads in RSS feed
4. Stop writing posts for advertising
5. Release all source code and future source code as open source immediately
6. Stop asking for donations
7. Remove ads from Feedburner
8. Remove ads from AdSense
9. Quit my one day a week job and work on DCoT on that day exclusively
10. Quit my four day a week job and work on DCoT exclusively full time

So, is anyone willing to take me up on my proposition? I am willing to commit to this. How about you? If so, I will formally set up the program. I eagerly await your comments.

Similar Posts:

• Thanks for Releasing The Code!
• Help! HowTo Make Money Blogging Without Ads?
• DCoT Apps Now Donation Source
• Support Update
• Thanks for the Help

If you found this post useful, why don't you buy me a cup of coffee to show your gratitude?

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22 Responses to “Making Money Blogging: A Non-Apology and a Proposition”

1. Josly Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 7:29 am

   Nice observation, thanks.

2. Tienie Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 7:40 am

   If you use Firefox as web browser you simply right click on adverts and click on block.

   A very useful feature if you find adds bothersome. I used to block adds, but then stopped as I find many of the adds interesting.

   I am not offended by any of the above mentioned gripes that users have. People will always find something to moan about. And you can’t please everyone all the time, thanks for a great blog Tim.

3. Kiltak Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 7:42 am

   Tell your readers to subscribe to your RSS feed… they’re almost free of ads..

   And beside that, we all know that people who click on ads are not regular readers, but people that comes from search engines..

   Here’s are my recommendation to you:

   Use adsense deluxe and only display ads on posts that are older, than let’s say, 1 month..

   This way, readers won’t be annoyed with ads, and ads will be shown where they are truly effective.

4. Robert T Muir Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 7:48 am

   Wow. I would have thought your readers would have a higher IQ.

   While many would think these anti-revenue “peeps” are teenagers, still living at home and not having to worry about bills, I’d bet that there are more than a few who grew up in the 80’s and 90’s and still think everything on the Intertubes should be provided from each according to their ability, to each according to their need. (Although they’re probably still living with Mom and Dad rent free too.)

   The going rate for subscriptions of this kind seems to be about $10/month. According to my aggregator, (the wonderful GreatNews), you have fewer than 4,000 subscribers. If you had double that and every single one signed up, then it might be worth it. But I don’t see that happening. The same people complaining about the ads and donations aren’t about to pony up dollars for a sub.

   Bob

5. discipulus Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 7:55 am

   This is a tough one for you I am sure.
   My personal view is this, like any product (for me Playstation3 comes to mind for me) if the price is too steep or the value to you is not worth it, do not spend your money on it.
   As a System Admin starting out and learning everything they didn’t teach me in school, I find value in your blog. On the flip side, my wages are cut throat low and I have trouble paying student loans and rent, let alone paying for a site as good as yours. Is it worth something to me? Without a doubt!! Will the asking price be more than the value I feel I can recieve in return? That remains to be seen I guess.
   So, I suppose this rambling rant is a vote for laying out your asking price for a subscription. You have had alot of thought provoking stuff and I value your blog.
   Just my opinion, I could be wrong!

6. Mike Diehn Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 8:00 am

   Tim, your proposition is fair, of course. Sounds to me like you run your blog a lot like the NPR folks run their radio stations. And I like that.

   I do consulting too and understand what it’s like to be taken for granted. It’s almost always by acquaintances, family or friends - people who really just don’t understand what they are asking of me when they want some help with their systems. I’m happy to help them, but wow - the time I could spend on them all taken together adds up to a lot.

   Money is tight for us, but I like your blog enough and learn enough from it that, yes, I’d pay a subscription to keep you working on it. And already I don’t object to the paid articles, the ads, etc. They add value to the site for me. I’ll talk to the wife about a donation, too, as a good-faith gesture.

   Keep writing, please.

7. Tim Fehlman Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 8:38 am

   I think I confused people a bit with the word “subscription”. I would not make Daily Cup of Tech available only to people who pay. In fact, I would not even have “premium” content that is only available to subscribers.

   Rather, think of me more like a “tech missionary”. I provide time, effort, talent, experience, etc. to Daily Cup of Tech and its readers. In return, those who have the means to support Daily Cup of Tech on a regular basis “subscribe” (this is the PayPal term) or donate monthly.

   I see this as more of a group/community effort. I think it is unreasonable to ask a university student or someone just starting out in the industry for $25 a month. But, there are some people out there who could afford this.

   I think a really good way of going about this would be to donate monthly the value of a coffee break at your favorite coffee stop. So, if you are a local coffee shop kind of guy, giving up one cup of coffee and a donut a month to donate to DCoT would probably put you back $1. If you are fortunate enough to be a Starbucks regular and you go for a non-fat Dulce de Leche Crème with whipped cream and an apple cinnamon muffin on the side, you may be able to spare up to $10 a month to skip this coffee break once.

   It would all come down to volume with everyone giving a little bit each month, suddenly we produce something much greater than we could on our own.

   Tim

8. Duncan Cunningham Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 8:44 am

   I second Robert T Muir comments “people complaining about the ads and donations aren’t about to pony up dollars for a sub”.

   I, for one, value your articles and they have helped Me learn and use tools that are of great, if not, specialized use. I visit your site, sometimes each day and sometimes only once a week.

   Your current setup with ads and promos is not a bother for me at all. I’d say.. ignore the mob of noisy minority, though they are a distracting bunch, the rest are silently watching, enjoying, learning and hopeful that this wonderful program that you run stays the same and continues the way it always has.. that’s why I visit your site.

   To those that feel you should be doing all of this for free, I’d like to see a list of their blogs updated daily with Interesting stuff in a neat and tidy fashion such as yours. boo! hoo! to them.

9. Brian Says:
   May 3rd, 2007 at 9:03 am

   Throwing my tupence in…

   Personally I think the donation scheme is the best way. If you feel the code is worthy why not show your appreciation in hard cash?

   As for the person that done the sums on the price per line, again I personally think that is reasonable. Nobody is twisting your arm to do it and the cost spread across several contributors is minimal. Now if you contributed and feel it is over priced, that is a different story.

   I like DCOT because of the informal but informative way it is presented. I have tried to blog in the past and never kept it up. WELL DONE TIM! I think if you are going down the road of a tech missionary you should get some volunteers. I would not mind contributing on occasions to this great site and I am sure others would too. You could become the editor in chief and share your baby with some other tech missionaries. Have a monthly guest contributor or a specialist corner.

   Whatever way DCOT continues just remember that your work is appreciated by many !

   Hail hail

   brian

10. Kevin Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 9:37 am

    I’ve been subscribing to the RSS feed for a couple months now, and this is definitely one of the sites where I receive some value.

    Would I donate regularly? Probably not; old habits die hard. I’d be more inclined to do something like ‘donate for the source code’ when I found something I’d use.

    The ads, etc, don’t bother me in the least - and I’m sure I’m part of the majority here. This site actually provides something NEW instead of just linking to other people doing “real” stuff.

    I think the site is great and I wish you the best of luck, Tim, in finding a way to make it a profitable venture for you.

11. Tim Fehlman Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 9:45 am

    Kevin,

    Yes, I’ve more or less relegated the “linking to cool stuff I found” activity to the tumblog. This is not to say that this stuff does not have value (I can’t possibly do everything) but, like you said, I’d rather post about what I’m doing for the readers, not what others are doing. It definitely takes more effort but I believe the end result is better quality.

    Tim

12. egon Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 10:48 am

    I don’t get it. People are actually complaining about your advertising? Who are they to say what you do with your own site? I come to this site regularly. If the advertising bothered me, I wouldn’t come here anymore. It’s that simple. You don’t have interstitials, pop-ups or unders, or anything annoying, it’s all non-intrusive, and you certainly deserve to get paid for the time you put into this. Including donations. Some people tend to think that everything on the web should be free. That’s fine, but expect advertising. Tim and others are providing you with a service, and just like any other job, he deserves to et paid for it.

13. JC Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 1:44 pm

    Since I have been the one to write mostly about these things publicly (I don’t know if some other also complained to you privatly by e-mail and if Tim refered to me as “some people” as a polite courtesy to not give my name), I feel I have to react to this.

    First, I am really upset when I see comments like the one from Robert T Muir.
    I don’t see how opinions on ads and money blogging are related to how smart a person is (and my IQ is high enough for me to not be ashamed of it, thanks for your concern), and it is quite insulting to the people voicing their opinion about the blog or having different opinions than yours.
    I’m not opposed to people using their blog to make money either, but just want to make sure as far as I can as a regular reader that they do not go overboard.

    As my only possible action in raising my doubts and giving opinion is leaving comments, I started to complain because I had the feeling that everything was going way to fast…
    If I remember well, the tip jar, source code donations and increased ads popped up at almost the same time, giving the maybe wrong impression that Tim got greedy all of a sudden.
    Tim is indeed the only one to make the decisions on what should be on his blog or not, but since this blog is open to the public, everyone has an opportunity to say its word about it, or so I think.
    If this blog wasn’t there, there would be no reader, but if there were no readers, this blog wouldn’t be there as well.

    By the way, it is a mark of open-mindess from Tim to not have stopped comments that had something to say about it even if it was not a thumb up and it is so as well to write a full post about it.

    As I stated on the “Release/Donate Source Code” post, I have slightly over-reacted because, in my opinion, Tim didn’t make very clear the fact that the source code would be released to everyone after $100 had been collected, opposed to the “Everyone wanting it has to pay for $100″ that one could understand by reading the same webpage, and so did I.
    So, I made the comment that it was harder for an afrikaan from Mali or Senegal to get the source code than a wealthier US or European citizen because of that, but since the source code is given to everyone after a collective total of $100 is reached… this comment isn’t relevant anymore and I have taken it back on the initial article (not sure that Tim did notice it, though…).
    While there was a good-looking graphic explaining the process, I think that Tim should have done a better job in explaining this and make as clear as possible that everyone would benefit from the collective donation to the source code.
    Describing the process was important, explaining the financial aspect was probably the most important in my humble opinion.

    Still, the source code is quite expensive : as I commented yesterday, Tim’s code is good quality (as good as it can get for such an utility : it isn’t on project that size that you can show major technical prowess after all because there is simply no room for this on a project of that complexity) and while I was feeling the blog was getting headed to a curious direction, I feel I always respect Tim’s technical skills and insight : if I didn’t, I wouldn’t be reading this blog, after all!), the source code per line is $1 and that’s a fact : not an anti-money driven-blog opinion.

    Indeed, all the other users will benefit from the source code and it doesn’t cost $1 per person but people who paid for it still paid it at that price.
    As Tim said, people not interested in the sources are free to not donate for them and no one is forced in that, so if some people are willing to pay sources at $1/line, good for them and fine with me, but I feel I can still quickly voice my opinion about that as I know the programming world a bit and can say that no programmer I know and probably in whole world charges $1/line. Time required is in my opinion another matter and in my opinion you can not compare this to consultancy hourly rates since it is a different job than programmers, who most often get paid on the project basis than on the hourly basis.

    That said, I am obviously not saying that paying for your sources on the line basis is a good idea, Tim, and while some programmers have been remunerated like this in the past (and still are), I was saying this to give a sense of proportion that the price wasn’t fair in regards of the size and complexity of the project.

    You may not be a true programmer and I even believes you do well for “just” an hobbyist, and even if I understand that you can not take as little time to do something like this than a programming veteran with 30 years of experience (which isn’t my case either), do you think it is fair to reflect the time it took you to do something as a “beginner” in the price and in the end still charging higher ?
    When I go to a shop and buy a product, I don’t care if it has been manufactured by experts or by newbies in the matter : all what matters is the quality and the price.

    No matter how I look at it, no matter how many people paid for this source, and no matter how many people the source was bought for $100, not more, but not less and for that project, I still think it was overpriced.

    Also, AutoIT is a free tool, available for anyone, with free support forums, and you are making money from their tool, that would have a lot of reason to turn shareware because it is really good.
    How are you planning to give them back to their community because you use their tool to make money in the first place, while they are giving the very tool you use, which is a quite complex piece of programming for free.
    Do you plan to donate a certain percent of your “Release the Source” incomes to them ?

    Third, on advertising, I have not much problems with Google Ads : I see them everywhere, on almost any website and they are mostly unintrusive.
    The banners do not bother me that much either and, to say the truth, I am even ready to click them once in a while if I know that it drives more revenue to Tim. It is true, though, that I was a bit annoyed by the fact that there were more and more of them, but I can get acustomed to this and bear with that.

    Actually, I wouldn’t have commented that much again on money-supporting of this blog if an advertisement didn’t try to install an ActiveX on my computer.
    The reason for this was that an advertisment network that was used on this blog had fraudulent practices and would randomly display an ad for a notorious spyware called ErrorSafe.
    I honestly believe that Tim was not aware of this and once he could confirm what I reported and my own investigations about this, he immediately removed the offending ad network from this blog.

    Even if Tim didn’t do this on purpose (which is obvious!), it is a fact that this advertisement posed a threat to the security of the readers : since the spyware was being launched by an advertisment, we can safely say that if this ad hadn’t been there in the first place, the adware would even had a chance to run “from” this website.

    I am not against advertising on websites if that’s unintrusive, but without trying to blame Tim who was very responsive and took the required steps immediately, he has a responsability of what happens on his website.
    Granted, he doesn’t manage that fraudulent ad network, but he is responsible for having put that fraudulent ad network in place on his site, and when I investigated this issue to see where the spyware attack was coming from, I discovered it was from Sherman Network.
    Based on the details I posted on the article of yesterday where all my comments about this are, I can not see how someone could actually believe Sherman Network to be a serious ad company.
    The ad-rotating and displaying script was running from a strange domain (www.hermoment.com), maybe not even belonging to Sherman Network and legitimate informations on a company named Sherman Network resulting from a Google search are scarce at best.

    It is not a blame, but Tim installed that advertisment script on the blog : when subscribing to their services, he should have checked they were serious, and when installing the script that it was coming from a legitimate source and not from a strange domain reflecting the lack of professionalism of this company.
    Again, I don’t want to blame Tim for this, but as the author or this blog he has responsability for what happens on it, be it good things or bad things, and even if he is not directly guilty for it.

    The only reason I could think of why this fraudulent ad network landed on DCoT was that Tim was maybe in a hurry, didn’t have time to check the company background thoroughly and was eager to make money from it, or maybe that they were luring people with higher remuneration rates than most of the other legitimate ads networks, but in the end, the readers could have been the ones to suffer of such a hasty decision, and from here, we step from the “minor ad annoyance” scope to the one of danger of getting infected.

    Again, I’m sure that Tim didn’t want this to happen, didn’t put this on purpose, and the fact that he reacted so quickly proves the point : everyone has the right to mess up somewhere and miss something, and I am sure that he will be more careful with his advertising contracts from now on.

    So now, it seems pretty clear that I am not against the advertisments on this website, but saying that ads should be put there because there are on the best blogs is a dull argument because there are also very good blogs (in my opinion even better than DCoT like http://blogs.msdn.com/oldnewthing/) that run free of any other ad or way to make money from the blog contents. So the opposite may be true : why should DCoT be any different of these blogs ?
    Also, walking on the better blogs footsteps doesn’t make the blog necessarily amongst these “best 5 blogs” and isn’t a justification or argument in itself : just a trend at best.

    Regarding Tim’s intention to devote yourself fully to your blog, I know some are definitely make a living out of it (some earn more than $5000/month) and I am glad that Tim is uncovering your future plans for DCoT and the reason why of this everything was set-up.
    Tim, if you want to make money from your website and make it a living, users are probably able to cope with the side effects of this, but anything receiving money needs to be professionnal and you should expect people to become more and more demanding because of that and that you shouldn’t expect to get away with confusing explainations on how this blog is going to be supported by the readers anymore because people will have bigger expectations on you.

    Once more, I am not against ads, or you getting some financial motivation for your time, but as I am a bit of nitpicker and found some of your arguments to be a bit dull, I found it necessary for me to react, partly to get better explanations or further clarifications as well.

    I don’t want to interfere with DCoT (and even if I wanted, how would I ?), so all my comments shouldn’t be seen as more than metaphysical questions or reactions to justifications that I don’t necesserily agree with than anti-money blogging or wanting to interfere with the future plans of DCoT.

    Today, I got some answers regarding how this money would be used and I am happy of that, so thanks Tim for the clear up and as such, it is not my intention to keep talking about that forever in my next comments.

    JC.

    PS: To some people who may answer to me that I am not donating and still give my opinion a lot, while it is true that I won’t donate for various reasons (not interested on the sources, having other ways to give back to the community by writing comments where I can help, etc), I am still a DCoT reader and so am helping it financially when I come several times a day visit the website, and then view its ads that I sometimes even click, so I feel I have as much rights than anybody else to give my opinions about what’s going on on the blog.
    What would upset me a great deal would be DCoT to have two kinds of readers : the one who donated and can open their mouth as much as they want, and the one who didn’t donate and hence have not much other choice than shut up, which is what some commenters like Robert T Miur or Duncan Cunningham seem to advocate in a more or less rude manner.

14. Tim Fehlman Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 3:25 pm

    JC,

    To start off, I appreciate you taking the time and effort to respond so thoroughly to this. This was no small feat.

    I just want to say that while there were some references in the post to your earlier comments, they were not directed specifically at you. There were others who had similar concerns that were expresses to me either in private or via e-mail and your comment was the straw that broke the the proverbial camel’s back. I just felt that some explanation was in order and that is why I wrote the post.

    I cannot speak for Robert T Muir or Duncan Cunningham, but I am going to give them the benefit of the doubt in two areas: 1) They probably were not attacking you specifically and 2) were probably reacting out of frustration. Both Rob and Duncan are well respected individuals in the blogosphere and I am certain that they did not intend any ill will.

    It is true that I am ramping up DCoT to be my families sole form of income and there is definitely some experimentation going on in order to make this happen. I have been looking at it from the blogger’s eyes and not the reader’s. I have to admit that it could look like I was getting greedy when, in fact, I’m just concerned about keeping food on the table if and when I make the permanent jump to full time blogger.

    Thanks for the comment about my being open-minded toward criticism. Even though I am the owner of DCoT and the moderator of the comments, I am not the censor. I want people to feel like they can disagree with me not feel like they are being attacked.

    As for the whole issue about each person having to pay for the code, I did notice your retraction and, yes, I might have been able to explain it better in the original post but there were still some people who were confused by the concept and I just felt that I needed to drive the point home.

    As for the source code being overpriced, I think we are going to have to agree to disagree on that point. Enough said.

    I am a regular supporter of AutoIt in many ways, I participate in the forums, I contribute financially, and I promote their project. If I were to limit my contributions to a percentage of the money that I earn from code release, I’m sorry to say that they would end up owing me money.

    I completely agree that the whole ActiveX advertising fiasco needed to be brought to my attention and needed to be dealt with quickly. I probably did not do my research as well as I should have primarily because the ad network was recommended to me by a colleague. And you are right. I put the script on the blog and I should have done my homework better.

    As for advertising, I did not mention other top blogs as a model to follow. They have a lot of practices that I have chosen to not subscribe to. Rather, my point was that some believe that bloggers should be above the whole monetizing thing and I simply user these blogs as an example. I’m also not saying the DCoT is one of the five best blogs either. All I am saying is that why should I not be able to make money in the same fashion that these other bigger blogs do?

    I am also aware that there are some bloggers out there that are just as active as I am and do not put any advertising on their blogs. But, I think that The Old New Thing may not be a fair example since Raymond Chen is a huge Microsoft evangelist and Microsoft has been “encouraging” their employees to be active bloggers for years. Effectively, this is part of his job and he gets paid to do it. Plus, he has an advertisement on the top right hand corner of of his blog (which he calls News) with an affiliate link to Amazon.com. So, not only does he get paid because he is the author of the book, he also gets paid because he is the seller of the book. I have no complaints about him doing that but you certainly cannot say that the website is ad free. As soon as I get my books finished (presently working on two), I will definitely make sure that I do this as well.

    You are quite correct that people may start to have bigger expectations of my but that is fine as long as I can have bigger expectations of them. When we meet each other’s expectations, we will truly have a great blogger/reader relationship. It is up to me to set the expectations and that is what I am attempting to do.

    Finally, all comments from all readers are welcome, regardless of whether the reader donates or not.

15. Kenneth G Smith Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 5:26 pm

    I find that your blog is very useful, often more useful than some of the established sites such as ZDNet and CNet. It is the only site that I try to read every day. Certainly you are entitled to run it the way you want and to solicit support. I have downloaded some of your freeware apps and find the “Release the code” concept both original and innovative. If everyone who reads your blog regularly left a donation in the Tip Jar, or contributed to releasing a project’s source code, or even left a few words of encouragement ot thanks; then they would balance out those who complain about the ads and donation requests. Please keep up the great work!

16. JC Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 5:51 pm

    Thanks for your answer and comments,

    It took me indeed some time to write this answer, and even more so since I am not an native english speaker : I am aiming to comment a bit more (I only discovered your blog a few week ago) on the technical subjects because I like it.

    I’ll try to be more concise as a lot have already been done and said on this matter.

    - It is good to know for me that I wasn’t the only one to have given my opinion about this, as I wondered if I was the only one and thought of me as a pain as nobody else reported the same.

    - The source code : indeed, you decide what’s going on your blog in the end so you have the final word, which is legitimate, but I could already voice my opinion freely about that, which is nice.
    As I said, it is not my intention to bring these topics forever (which would be damn annoying and not constructive) so I’ll not mention it everytime you post a new source obviously.
    Also, as the next projects will get bigger and more complex, the price for the sources to them will progressively seem less and less overpriced to me as well.

    - AutoIT : if you’re already supporting them a lot, then there is indeed no shame for you to make money from this tool, I agree.

    - Spyware Ad-Issue : as I said, it is ok for everyone to miss something at times and the quick response more than made up for it.

    - Raymond Chen’s blog : I was almost sure that someone would bring up the issue of the book, but first, let me say that I never heard that there were any kind of pressures or financial incentives like bonuses for writing their blog. (I know it isn’t what you said, but getting bonuses or increases might have been a way for bloggers to get motivated… a bit like yourself ;-p).
    Even if they are encouraged to do it (I actually and strongly believe that Microsoft people aren’t more evil or cocky than others and wanted to speak to the whole world for a long time but couldn’t for legal or internal policy issues), they may do it on their job time, but I doubt (but might be wrong too) that it is part of their official occupation (for most people liking their job a lot, the boundary between occupation, hobby and spare time is rather blurry, anyway).
    Also, being Microsoft employees doesn’t make them simply “Microsoft evangelists” (although it is true that Raymond Chen became one of the visible tips of the Microsoft “iceberg”) but also speak about other matters, talk about other things than just Microsoft and even sometimes say that Microsoft isn’t always right (which may even get their own lawyers a bit p1ssed at times ;-p).
    To get back to the book thing, indeed he (rather discretly) advertises his book on the front page (it is also true he wrote an handful of articles to let people know about it), but the book is something he wrote and is probably proud of that.
    After all, a blog is also (or even primarily) a “personal” place and part of yourself on the Internet and if the link to the book wasn’t there, this part of himself wouldn’t be there, which would be a shame : giving news (it is the name of that section indeed) of yourself or what you’re doing (even if it is a book that people may buy) and letting people know he wrote a book and saying where people may get it doesn’t seem the same to me as advertising any random product Google Ads or FeedBurner will have decided to advertise for your website.
    It is true that he gets a commission from Amazon as well, but Amazon is a popular website for people to buy books.
    As I said, I am a foreigner and I would have bought the book from them anyway since it is not available in my country.
    The fact that he gets a commission doesn’t get in the way of the convenience at all (while a “dumb” advertisement does, even if minor and unintrusive and thus acceptable), and I would even be inclined to say it makes life easier to people wanting to purchase the book right away from his website so it isn’t completely the same than a random advertising to me.
    You may reply that he is selling his work like you’re selling your sources and you would have a point : the difference is that I have not much of a problem with you selling your sources, but rather the price of this first project (but again, this case is closed), so I believe we actually agree on this at its core.

    I also forgot to tell about Mark’s Russinovitch blog ( http://blogs.technet.com/markrussinovich/ ), which hasn’t any advertising at all on it.
    You may tell me he works at Microsoft too but it quite recent and he was maintaining his blog way before that back on the SysInternals webpage.
    To be honest, I am not sure that his blog at that time was ad-free, but since I can’t remember of any advertisment at all, it was either non existant or completely unintrusive.

    Again, for some other readers, the point of this is not that ads are bad, but just that some popular blogs run free of ads as well.

    Last, if I may take this as a opportunity to now further answer to Robert T Miur (Duncan said partly roughly the same, but was much more respectful), even if I don’t take this personnaly, please let me say that age has nothing to do with your opinions and is even one great thing about the Internet : people can not see your age (unless specified on some sort of user profile) and so won’t have preconceived idea whether the person they discuss with is a “young brat” or an “old fart” : it happened to me to discuss with teenagers on IRC channels, forums or even “real-life” that were actually more open-minded than people on their fourties, so making those generalities is, in my humble opinion, totally uncalled for.

    People’s ideas and argumentation skills also have little to do with the fact they still live with their father, mother, or are economically independant/stable, at best they are more experienced about “things of life”, but their opinion is not necessarily less valuable.

    As for me, I am a grown-up (but still young) who works in the IT field and am economically independant, pay my taxes, my food, treat my friends to lunch/diner and even pay my tickets when I use the sub! I bought a flat and am paying my mortgage without relying on my mother or father for this.
    So, how you can jump to such (inaccurate) conclusions without even knowing the persons who voiced such ideas ?
    Also, attacking people’s idea because of their background (that you again simply assume) rather than trying to discuss in an open-minded manner with them to find out more probably doesn’t make you sound more intelligent than those that you assume to have a “low IQ”, which again, you don’t have any idea about and so do I about you : only discussing and arguing with people in an open and polite manner would allow you to evaluate this properly.

    I feel that Tim and I showed that open-minded and mutually respectful discussion could happen even on such sensible subjects : we had and still have some different opinions on, some of these subjects, but we understood each other’s opinions better, which was the whole goal of our talking together.
    In the end, it is also not only a problem of being “stingy” or not and I believe that it is a bit more complex : indeed, for some people, knowledge on the Internet should be free : a source code is part of “knowledge” and I can understand that people feel bad about someone making pay for it.
    I like very much the idea behind Wikipedia who makes knowledge as easily and globally available as possible to people, no matter where the are from, no matter their ethnic origins, and no matter how wealthy/rich or educated they are… the only technical prerequisite being to have a computer and an up and running Internet connection, and to be honest, it is one of the very last places on the Internet I would like to see ads on, because I would think that it would kind of “corrupt” this wonderful project.

    Now, I am not reactionary and I can understand some arguments that Tim gave and do not compare his blog to such an universal, humanist and ambitious project as Wikipedia, so I can bear with some ads on DCoT that I would nevertheless never want to see on Wikipedia… but some people may have stronger opinions than me on this and have a harder time accepting this.

    They also maybe are people browsing the Internet from a long time and notice that there is more and more ads everywhere on the Internet (altough the dreadful popup problem is mostly solved thanks to browsers and some legitimate toolbars) and do not want to see end it up like TV or streets where you can not avoid advertisement no matter how hard you may try, and if you think about the daily-routine “real-life” places where you can see no ads at all, you will see that there is actually very few of them, not even your home, since TV, Internet, and even the random box of cornflakes in the kitchen constantly spread advertisements whenever you use them.
    So as I said, I think the opinion of these people can not be simply summed up as “they are simply stingy people who wouldn’t even pay for their sub tickets”.

    Last, I was quite active in some areas of the Internet roughly 4 or 5 years ago and gave a lot of my time and works for free (since it is not in english and not much related to this blog’s matters, posting references to this here would make little sense), so I know what contributing to a community is like, I also was active in some Windows programming newsgroups/forums supporting people I could (among others, I used to be a Win32ASM Community forum moderator) : today I simply do not have the time to do those things due to my occupation and other prerogatives of my life, but I just want to make clear that I am not one of those only sucking the web contents and never giving anything back but I also think that there is others way to contribue than money and donations.

    I hold no hard feelings and want to think that Robert’s opinion was more clumsily expressed than they actually are, but the assumptions on the background of people thinking another way than him really surprised me…

    I wanted to be more concise, but it looks like I failed in that again.

17. Duncan Cunningham Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 8:15 pm

    Hello again,

    I’d like to address the comments by J.C. where he, and I quote “the one who donated and can open their mouth as much as they want, and the one who didn’t donate and hence have not much other choice than shut up, which is what some commenters like” “Duncan Cunningham seem to advocate in a more or less rude manner”.

    I’ve managed to upset people in the past because of what I’ve said, but to upset someone because of something that they ‘think’ I’ve said, is truly a waste of both of our time and I’d like to apologize. I was once told that if you can write an email, no matter how funny and positive, and re-read in the most negative way possible, there is a good chance that this would be the way it will be read by your audience.

    What I said was “ignore the mob of noisy minority”, meaning “Tim, don’t worry about them, if they don’t like your site, they are free to visit it as often or as infrequent as they’d like, but many others enjoy it.”

    And “To those that feel you should be doing all of this for free, I’d like to see” other sites such as Tim’s single handedly managed and updated so often.

    Please don’t see personal attacks where there are none, if you feel offended where none was intended, you’ve done it to yourself out of some feeling of guilt.

    I am here to say TIM, Good Job buddy!! and I reserve the right to post positive comments too. People shouldn’t be complaining when others have the same freedoms as they and accept those that don’t agree with yours.

    J.C. I accept your comments, please don’t lose sleep over mine.

18. Richard Busch Says:
    May 3rd, 2007 at 8:43 pm

    Already alot of comments but I’d like to add mine in.

    In a world of wishy-washy people who are always changing their stance every time public opinion changes, I really appreciate your being upfront and clear on what you are doing and why. This points to good character.

    I appreciate your site and have no problem whatsoever with you earning income from it! We, the readers, do have a certain ‘advertising tolerance’ level. When you go beyond that level, people will complain and leave. I believe you know that as well and respect your readers. What I’ve seen thus far is not past that level.

    Blogging at the level of quality content that you continue to deliver comes at a price - equipment, services, and time not spent earning money in the real world - I’m pleased if you can earn something back for your efforts.

    I wish you best of luck at your goal of raising support to be a tech missionary! I’m a missionary myself, although in the traditional sense, and raising the finances has been and continues to be quite a challenge..

    Keep it up - it’s a great cup of tech that you serve!

19. Curtis Says:
    May 4th, 2007 at 8:25 am

    Personally, I do not have any problems with you putting ANY sort of advertising in your posts/site.

    I understand that you are running a business - albeit one that came out of a hobby and love of tech, but a business none the less.

    It takes time to run a quality business. That is time that you are taking away from your loved ones. It takes resources to run a quality business. Those are resources that you are taking away from your loved ones as well. You are providing a service that you give away for people to benefit from at no cost to them.

    However you decide to operate YOUR business is YOUR business - no one else’s. If someone doesn’t like it, they can take a flying leap off the unsubscribe link!

    Curtis

20. Rob Dunn Says:
    May 4th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    I also think that ads are just fine and dandy. I expect them wherever I go, and I understand why they are there. Heck, I’ve even clicked on a few, because working as a network administrator, I need to keep up on the latest software.

    Myself, I thought I could do a ‘donate’ link on my website, but discovered that not one person donated over the course of a year. I finally decided that if I get a few clicks here or there from ads, then that was much more productive than donations.

    I feel that I can advertise guilt-free, because I am distributing code and information without any further obligation to the downloader/recipient, which in of itself is worth way more than what the ads bring in (or at least I like to think so).

    If I can get a couple people to click a link (not buy anything, just click!), then I can make a few cents here and there to help pay for hosting costs.

    Like what was stated by Curtis, by maintaining a daily blog (or other type of rapidly changing web resource), you are taking away time that you could be doing something else. At the very least, you can help offset current costs by advertising.

    Earlier, JC had some great points, but I disagree with the following:
    

    “Also, AutoIT is a free tool, available for anyone, with free support forums, and you are making money from their tool, that would have a lot of reason to turn shareware because it is really good.

    How are you planning to give them back to their community because you use their tool to make money in the first place, while they are giving the very tool you use, which is a quite complex piece of programming for free.

    Do you plan to donate a certain percent of your “Release the Source” incomes to them ?

    I don’t know if JC was being sarcastic or no, but you can refer to the AutoIT licensing for the answer to that:
    Commercial Use. You may sell for profit and freely distribute scripts and/or compiled scripts that were created with the SOFTWARE PRODUCT.

    Please do not go to subscription based blogging, you will end up losing a good portion of religious DCoT’ers.

21. Tim Fehlman Says:
    May 4th, 2007 at 12:51 pm

    Rob,
    I will never go to a subscription only model for DCoT. All that would do is kill readership and target DCoT for hackers.

    The purpose of DCoT is to inform first and foremost and I refuse to make the information that is on DCoT proprietary to those who can afford it.

    Tim

22. JC Says:
    May 4th, 2007 at 2:50 pm

    Hi Rob (Dunn),

    First, thanks for your compliment on some of my points and for having posted this part of the AutoIT license.

    Yes, it is true that license says something on that and I know that they do not prevent reselling or using scripts in a commercial use, which is an even more generous stance from the AutoIT authors.
    Many open-source licenses, including the GPL and others, give similar freedom.

    To answer your question, when I made the comment on that point, I was not trying to be sarcastic but was positioning myself more from the ideologic point of view than the legal one…

    Indeed, I believe that this whole “debate” on ads was more ideological and moral (or even ethical at times) than actually legal.

    Tim certainly has the legal right to put ads on his website and ask
    for people to donate, but even though it is legal, some people, including me, raised some ideological and moral concerns and it simply was a consensus that it was legal and nobody doubted this.

    So I made this comment about AutoIT from the same point of view, because, sometimes, what is legal may still not look moral or ethical and thus may not be well perceived by some people.
    To give a real life example of what I mean, abortion or death sentence/penalty and both legal in some states and places in the world but it is subjects that seriously divide up the global opinion in terms of moral and ethical concerns.

    By this, I didn’t mean that Tim couldn’t sell his sources, but was simply wondering how he was intending to give back to their community since he was using their tool because making money out of a free tool and because Tim clearly stated himself in earlier replies and even of that article that he was against people not contributing back when they get something good and simply use it selfishly.

    Even if you are allowed by its license, it doesn’t seem very ethical or moral to me to make money out of it simply because the license allows you to and I am sure that it isn’t exactly what the AutoIT people had in mind when they included this on the license, but rather that some people would give back some of their revenues or by helping out in the support forums, for instance.

    Since Tim then clearly stated that he had been heavily supporting the AutoIT community by both helping out in forums and donating for a long time, I don’t have any problem with that since it is both legal and moral/ethical to me, so everything looks fine with me on this matter in the end.

    I hope I made what I was meaning by this clearer.

    Cheers,

    JC.

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