I think I’ve been unconsciously negatively prioritizing traffic growth on ribbonfarm. The marginal cost of traffic (overages on my hosting plan) is not worth the marginal value of new readers. It’s a kind of stock buyback. Growth without a good idea driving it is a net liability.
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Growth for the sake of growth is the editorial ideology of a cancer blog. I wouldn’t mind growth, but only if it is also a genuine evolution in what we do on the blog. If we run out of new ideas, developing deeper conversations with old readers beats courting new ones.
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In a way, an idea space has a “capacity” of the number of minds that can usefully connect within it in a live conversation. Something analogous to Dunbar’s number but higher. Like 150,000 instead of 150. But it’s not infinite. At some point more minds don’t add more new thoughts.
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Right now we’re hovering around the half-a-million visitors per year mark (whatever the hell that means; I never really understood web analytics). If the next scaling step is say 1 million, it needs a different *kind* of meta idea-space that can hold that many minds.
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Operationally the blog just about breaks even. Hosting+paying non-editor writers = affiliate income. Editors aren’t paid. We average about $145/mo in hosting ($95/mo if paid annually plus $50 average overage). The next traffic tier works out to about $240/mo with no overages...
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Now, it’s not about the $... I could afford to throw another $1200/y at this without making it up in revenue, but that would feel like vanity publishing to me. It’s a bit of a personal challenge to at least break even. I’m kinda vain about keeping the blog non-vanity
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But frankly, that seems very dumb to me because I know of better ways to make money if that’s the goal. Even taking on a dull consulting gig is a more interesting way to make money than this kind of shitty media-business thinking
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Maybe I’m just rationalizing laziness. Maybe I’d think differently if I had to make payroll for even one full time staff writer. But I’m not *that* lazy. I think a lot of the problems with new media (are we still calling it that) is pursuing uninteresting growth.
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Replying to @vgr
ribbonfarm breaking "just about breaking even" is happy news to me – my instinct is that actively trying to change that will probably break or kill something in a bad way. the point of ribbonfarm imo is that the show must go on. not having to pay someone's bills is A+++ feature
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I vaguely think of it as like a dodgy-looking space bar off some asteroid belt. why is it there? how is it in operation? nobody really knows. the bartender just swears at you and makes weird drinks. what the fuck. everyone there loves it and it's a great place to be
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Now that's really the sort of growth direction I like. If it gets bigger, it just turns into a different kind of dodgy operation at a larger scale, like say the bar growing into a junkyard for space junk.
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Replying to @vgr
yes!! wealthy mcmoney guy: mr bartender I really like what you're doing with this place, here's a nice fat cheque bartender: nice, i'm adding a bizzare gravity well installation art piece wealthy mcmoney guy: but that's not how you make more money bartender:pic.twitter.com/3qiXOGqVyC
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