I've got an immense respect for this fellow, Jason Kottke. Since early this year, he decided to make blogging his profession, and he lives off what money his blogging can provide. He is a problogger, by definition.
from Kottke.org
But his art is very much unlike other self-professed probloggers. He doesn't serve a single ad on his blog. He doesn't blog about specific topics. His blog is absolutely free of any third-party influence whatsoever.
Like I said above, there's got to be a way to support media that doesn't involve advertising. But more than that, I don't want to disrupt the relationship dynamic we've got going here. There are currently two parties involved with kottke.org: me and the collective you. Advertising introduces a third party. In my experience, the third wheel of advertising often works to unbalance the relationship in favor of either the author or the readers (usually in favor of the author). If ads were involved, I might feel the need to change what or how I write to appease advertisers. I might write to increase pageviews and earn more revenue. I could fill pages with ads, earning more revenue but making the content more difficult to read or pushing some content off the page entirely. You could block advertising and deny me needed revenue.
I suspect he doesn't make the big bucks of what other probloggers have reaped from the various ad networks out there, but what he does retain is an un-questionable sense of integrity. His writing are snapshots of his mind (and it must be a pretty impressive mind to have loyal-25k-visitors-a-day), pure art, very much similar to the great artists and artisans of Europe who produced art for their patrons (who in turn provided for their livelihood).
I'm attempting to revisit the idea of arts patronage in the context of the internet. Patrons of the arts have typically been wealthy individuals, well-heeled foundations, or corporations. As we've seen in many contexts, the net allows individuals from geographically dispersed locations to aggregate themselves for any number of reasons.
via Kottke.org.
Its a brilliant idea and exhilaratingly brave. What he has done is perhaps unique, and unreplicable due to the nature of his audience and his talent. That makes it all the more special -- the pinnacle of problogging: being financially rewarded by the people who value your writing and not your ads.
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