- Patronage. It's how the arts survived for the first 2-3000 years of civilization.
- Mechanical royalties / automated syndication. It's how musical performances are licensed currently.
- Live performance. Asses in seats.
- Mixed-model revenues. The Economist splits its revenue share roughly into thirds of subscriptions, ads, and bespoke services (the Economist Intelligence Unit).
- Memberships. Public broadcasting, Consumer Reports, and similar systems rely on contributions and pledges.
- Mandatory licensing -- the BBC television tax model. I'm not arguing that it's a free market system, however it's demonstrably worked and fairly well for nearly 85 years.
There are a lot of models. Mass-market advertising applied well to mass-media broadcasting. It's been heavily pursued online, though advertising rates (low), click-through metrics (phenomenally low), technical means of avoidance (readily available if not widely applied), audience dispersal (high) all suggest it's not exactly a resounding success.
I'm not so convinced HN is as anti-corporate as you claim, though I'd color myself that way. It's that there's a very high level of technical expertise -- far more than is necessary to be aware of and successfully deploy ad blocking. Without both factors, you'll find low utilization of same, even with a high anti-corporate bent -- which isn't all that rare, really.
I'll stand by my first point: the general public is fearful and highly ignorant of the technology they use in general. Show me some stats to the contrary and I might find this conversation more interesting.
Your alternatives are for the income that hosting advertisements may provide. They are not alternatives for the service that advertising itself provides.
And for that I offer in place of unsolicited advertising:
- Classifieds
- Directories
- Brochures
- Information centres
- Expos
- Local bulletins
- Store signage
- Word-of-mouth
- Sponsored events
- Trade publications
Of course these may well not have the bang-for-buck of unsolicited ads, but I dream that one day the visual pollution of third-party advertising will not be as accepted.
- Patronage. It's how the arts survived for the first 2-3000 years of civilization.
- Mechanical royalties / automated syndication. It's how musical performances are licensed currently.
- Live performance. Asses in seats.
- Mixed-model revenues. The Economist splits its revenue share roughly into thirds of subscriptions, ads, and bespoke services (the Economist Intelligence Unit).
- Memberships. Public broadcasting, Consumer Reports, and similar systems rely on contributions and pledges.
- Mandatory licensing -- the BBC television tax model. I'm not arguing that it's a free market system, however it's demonstrably worked and fairly well for nearly 85 years.
There are a lot of models. Mass-market advertising applied well to mass-media broadcasting. It's been heavily pursued online, though advertising rates (low), click-through metrics (phenomenally low), technical means of avoidance (readily available if not widely applied), audience dispersal (high) all suggest it's not exactly a resounding success.
I'm not so convinced HN is as anti-corporate as you claim, though I'd color myself that way. It's that there's a very high level of technical expertise -- far more than is necessary to be aware of and successfully deploy ad blocking. Without both factors, you'll find low utilization of same, even with a high anti-corporate bent -- which isn't all that rare, really.
I'll stand by my first point: the general public is fearful and highly ignorant of the technology they use in general. Show me some stats to the contrary and I might find this conversation more interesting.