

Sponsor Me, If You Will  - malonedotcc
http://malone.cc/sponsor-me-if-you-will/

======
XBigTK13X
Something about this doesn't sit well with me. I'm not certain what it is, but
here's my attempt to explain.

You say that the inspiration comes from other sponsored bloggers, but there's
a difference between what you are asking and what they are asking. John Gruber
and Marco Arment have both created useful products. They proved that if they
have the freedom to manage their own time, then they will build things that
other people want to use. I flipped through many of your blog posts and Tweets
trying to get a feel for the type of work you do. I couldn't find anything of
value.

All I found were number of pop culture references and one paragraph summaries
of tiny projects that you gave up on when the time came to implement. For
example, Maelstrom was something that was related to Twitter streams. If I'm
reading the dates correctly, you appear to have started work on the 18th and
then quit the following day, stating burnout after a few hours of programming.
Now its the 20th, and you are here asking for money. That is not the type of
work ethic that gives me any confidence in your ability to produce valuable
content in the future.

@Prawn compared this to the million dollar homepage. However, I think there's
a big disconnect between the two. That homepage was always explained as an
advertising experiment. You are asking for money in the hopes that a few
hundred dollars will be the missing key to producing anything of value.

It feels smarmy to me (someone who works a 9-5 and still manages to slowly
grow his own company in his free time) to see someone who built nothing of
value ask for a hand out. Its actually worse than building nothing. There is
evidence that you cannot focus on a project for more than a weekend.

In all honesty, if your Twitter account hadn't been created back in September,
I would assume this is another elaborate test to see how social networks can
be gamed.

If that all came across as overtly negative, then good. I think that we could
all use more positive comments when they are warranted, but I cannot find
anything about this that isn't slimy.

To be fair, if anyone cares to dig through my own history, it's easy to find
that I actually did the same thing at one point in my life. The difference is
that I was 15 at the time.

~~~
malonedotcc
I fully accept the fact that I'm a tiny blogger with little to no material who
probably shouldn't be doing this.

But I'm doing it.

------
prawn
If it's not nofollowed, any sponsorship link could well be worth $5 especially
after the site's been linked from here?

At some point, the Million Dollar Homepage seemed ridiculous, but once it
started getting press (and thus pagerank), links from it increased in value.
Was nofollow a common thing back then? There would've been a sweet spot when
it was notable enough to get press, but not enough for your link to be swamped
amongst many others.

Assuming there's still traffic beyond the initial 800 HN visitors, $5 for a
couple thousand more targeted viewers isn't ridiculous.

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hkmurakami
Apologies for the off-topic post, but the hyphenated blog-ger in the first
paragraph really caught my eye. I never knew that Wordpress, or any online
publishing medium actually supported intelligent hyphenation at the end of a
line.

I sometimes see incredibly widely spaced lines in full-line-width justified
blogs (first word of the next line is a very long word that doesn't fit in the
previous line), which always made for an awkward experience. Hats off to
Wordpress for implementing this.

~~~
glymor
It's probably the "hyphens: auto" [1] in the CSS that's doing it. No support
in Chrome yet [2].

[1] <http://www.w3.org/TR/css3-text/#hyphenation> [2]
<http://caniuse.com/#feat=css-hyphens>

------
useflyer
Malone, at the current price of Free, I'd love to sponsor you. Here's to
hoping the demand gets you to raise prices soon ;)

~~~
misframer
It's AUD $5. He meant "Free" as in available.

~~~
malonedotcc
Well said, I'll make that clearer.

------
jgrahamc
So, I suspect the reason Gruber etc. get that kind of money is that they have
a very large number of readers (because of their content) and that there's a
power law at work and that your blog is worth next-to-nothing.

To give you some figures from jgc.org:

On May 13, 2010 I added a link to every blog post taking readers to Amazon.com
to buy my book. Since then I have had 2,699,126 page views and 14,191 clicks
on the link resulting in total money to me of $560.59.

So three years at 75,000 page views a month worked out to $15 a month.

Gruber is getting 5 million page views a month (66x jgc.org) and getting
$37,000 (2,500x jgc.org).

Yes, I could probably monetize jgc.org better, but what I'd really need is
page views.

------
rafeed
Gotta hand it to you for having the balls to do it (and submit to HN).

~~~
malonedotcc
Not gonna lie; I thought I'd get my ass kicked. You guys scare me a little.

~~~
androidb
If you get scared by HN, I assume you haven't tried a 4chan submission
before...

~~~
tagabek
A 4chan submission seems like a desperate attempt to get eyes on your product.
Has anyone every tried this before?

"How I used 4chan to make $X" would be an interesting read.

~~~
malonedotcc
The book is one page. It has "I didn't." in all-caps serif, followed by a
picture of an anime character doing something unseemly with a bag of money.

------
robryan
On the back of increased visits from this thread you should probably raise
prices :P

~~~
malonedotcc
I think the $5 mark should stay for the first one, then we'll see :).

~~~
androidb
Not sure where the sarcasm ends on your blog but if you're really serious
about the sponsorship here's what you can do: 1\. Setup a fiverr account and
post the sponsorship as a $5 gig (the real dollars, US that is ;) ) 2\.
Mention in there you've been recently mentioned on a high-profile news site
3\. Post a photo of the traffic stats 4\. Profit...

~~~
danielsamuels
Luckily for him, the value of AUD is almost exactly the same as USD.

------
Xanza
This takes balls, not gonna lie.

------
quackerhacker
Stay funny! Your blunt comical honesty would bring me back. Just keep posting
and you'll get your users...btw how's the traffic spike?

~~~
malonedotcc
It's amazeballs.

------
jessepollak
I like the idea — I'll be interested to see if you get any takers.

~~~
malonedotcc
As will I, although I'm guessing I might get some fake ones. Like "Hey, I'm
building a citrus forum called LemonParty..."

------
potomak
I'm trying to do the same with Tomatoes[1].

[1] <http://tomato.es/pages/sponsors>

------
thoughtcriminal
If you work really hard on making a quality podcast that gives value to a
target audience, I promise you you'll never have to ask for sponsorship.
People will knock on your door, money in fist.

At that point, you may even choose not to because your built-up audience will
buy from you.

That said, there is no harm in trying. There may be takers. The only problem
is that if there are a lot of takers, HN could be overrun with this sort of
stuff.

I wish you success!

