Greed is ruining the web
I was reading an article a couple of hours ago and in the first 30 lines the author managed to remind me that yes, he runs a membership program, that yes, the program is awesome and I should subscribe to it, and that yes, there's also a newsletter that is also awesome and I should subscribe to that as well.
This is happening on every, single, post. Don't get me wrong, I get it. I know why this is happening, I know why people do this. I've been running side projects for years and I helped friends run their side projects for almost as long. Side projects are mostly a product of love and earning a living out of them is extremely challenging.
And I have nothing against people that monetise side projects. I think it's great that we live in a time where this is a possibility. But I also think this is slowly killing most of the great content on the web. As soon as someone finds a niche that "works" they stop exploring and they start digging as deep as possible into this one single thing that works. And by works I mean it makes money. But making money is not the same as creating good content.
The opposite seems to be true more often than not. Great content usually lives in odd corners of the web, seen only by a few people a year, created because someone was passionate about something. It will not generate money, it will not make someone famous. And that's OK.
I think way too many people nowadays approach the web with a financial mindset. To create something that will eventually generate money. And that's just sad.