Reply to post: Re: Dear Editor...

No nudes, bloated apps, Android sucks and 497 other complaints about Apple to the FTC

Anonymous Coward
Anonymous Coward

Re: Dear Editor...

How do you think online newsletters survive? Clickbait is literally their stock in trade. Writers are graded, and rewarded, solely on the basis of how many clicks they can get.

I *think* El Reg still puts some effort in, getting the balance right between clickbait and actually offering content that is interesting enough for readers to return to. This is why the above reaction is important: readers will complain if they veer too much into "just clickbait" territory.

That said, I think the business model that exclusively hunts for clicks is under threat anyway, and other than subscriptions I don't see any other way to re-establish that revenue stream. Advertising has all been absorbed by the big guys, and then utterly destroyed because they grew careless in what they accepted as ad payload and so turned this into the biggest malware distribution platform ever. The problem was that, along the way, they needed to get everyone to believe that content was free and by doing so pretty much undermined a subscription model for the smaller players.

Not an easy one to solve IMHO, although I did just have an idea that I need to work out..

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