Piro On Why .Coms Don't Work

cabbey writes: "Say the name MegaTokyo and most people, if they recognize it, think 'one of the best manga/comics on the net today. (ignoring the recent 'stick figure dom' days while Piro was moving).' But few people think about the social, economic and philosophic issues the authors' rants can delve into. This morning Piro put up a rather long 'rant' that's really a catching insight into why the dot-com world didn't have a snowball's chance in hell of surviving. (archive link to the rant in question, it's below the comic. ;) "

Comments

Why should I care what Piro says, again?

[_bug_]

He puts out an okay manga (a little too cliched and too close to the typical "AH! My Goddess" and "Hand Maid May" type of stories about some lonesome geek for it to be a "great" manga)

But anyways...

How is it that Piro can rant on what amounts to his personal weblog and people take notice?

First off, he doesn't cover the .com bombs at all! He only covers one specific model of offering a service for free and then turning it pay afterwards.

I don't even think that was (is) a business model to begin with. It was more a necessity after banner ads became obviously ineffective. Once you start losing revenue on a free service it's pretty obvious that you simply start charging for that service. Just look at Something Awful. Lowtax didn't charge for forum access initially, but after the whole eFront debacle and the realization that banner ads don't work, he had to turn it over to a pay site.

This wasn't a planned business model. It was the result of the necessity to recoup some lost revenue.

So right off Piro is dead wrong.

And then it all of a sudden turns into his own little time-machine going back to the days of his first 3x3 eyes web site and then goes into a (farily arrogant) rant about "Oh, I CREATE I don't copy".

Give me a break. This shouldn't even have made it on /.

I'm thinking Hemos was suffering from a mid-morning hangover when he put this through. There is _NOTHING_ worthwhile about this rant by Piro. Nothing that makes me THINK or QUESTION about the subject of the .COM failure. It isn't well organized or presented in a clear fashion.

You want some GOOD writing on the subject, go check out disenchanted.com and stop feeding your brain this Internet junk food crap.

Piro

[Jaster Mareel]

Megatokyo RULES.

Q SUCKS, he is my FOE

Supporting websites.

[Restil]

This article hits on a number of issues I've had to deal with lately. My website is frequently getting 3000 visitors a day and on occasion reaches 10,000 daily visits. This is creeping close to the limits of my bandwidth. Since I support this completely out of pocket, its slowly starting to dawn on me that I really should at least ATTEMPT to gain some revenue through the website, even if it only pays for the bandwidth.

However, I am steadfastly opposed to traditional methods of obtaining revenue. Banner ads are a no brainer. I simply don't want them. Not only do they consume valuable screen realestate, many people block them anyways, and the rest ignore them. They pay a pittance in any case. Why annoy people for nothing.

Charging for access to the site simply isn't an option. As fun as it might be, nobody's going to pay for it. If some of the future projects of mine get finished, I might be able to charge subscriptions for some type of priority access, but I can't imagine offering anything that wouldn't be accessible freely to the general public.

Affiliate programs make for a nice, non intrusive option. But I feel like promoting products I have no interest in, as it goes against the theme of the site. And even if I DO support products that are in line with the message of inspiratation I attempt to convey, the companies that sell some of those products haven't exactly advertised in such a way that promotes good will. Anyone NOT seen an semi-lewd X10 ad lately?

The best option I have come up with is to manufacture or assemble my own products and sell them myself, and support the site and maybe myself through profits on those sales. Nobody will be compelled to buy them, but at least they will represent what I'm trying to accomplish. But before I can do that, I need to produce them in a more professional manner and with a higher quality than I do for the demonstration purposes.

The point I'm trying to make is, if I continue to gain in popularity, I'm going to need to find some way to make money to survive. But I don't want to lose respect in the process either. The day I start bringing in revenue should be a day of rejoince for my visitors because they realize it will bring about more fun toys to play with over the internet, not dismay because of greater restrictions.

-Restil