keynote - kottke & dooce

I am sitting here 3 rows back from jason kottke and heather ”dooce“ armstrong. They are one of the keynotes of the SXSW conference, and so far my favorite. The topics are pretty general and are steering toward the level of personalness (word?) and their respective models of monetizing their content. Jason used a subscription service for kottke.org, having a donation drive for 3 weeks last year netted him roughly $40k. The drive enabled him to quit his normal job and focus on his site as well as other projects. He just mentioned, that as he said on his site, that he will not be doing another year of the ”micropatron“ program. On the flip side of the subscription model is the standard advertising model in which dooce.com has taken the path of. She states that it works well, and is not looking to move away from advertising.

The main takeaway from this talk revolves around how their respective revenue models affected the shape of the content. For example, jason felt that since he had subscribers he had to adhear more to what he thought his paying readers wanted to read. He felt the pressure and the site which he has authored for 8 years took a more impersonal spin and as he said “suffered” because of the revenue he took in from his readers. Heather on the other hand feels that the advertising has in noway shapes her feeling toward the published content on dooce. She continues to “live the content” and keep it personal regardless of the corporate imagery on the side bar.

Jason and Heather are now kiddingly taking jabs at each other based on the content of each others site. Jason states I try to keep my personal life out of it for the most part nowadays. Heather jumps back at him “Jason, you posted a picture of yourself in the shower” - “Heather, I actually saw that you printed that picture out.” ... the dialog continues like this.

Note: Heather is rocking the ever popular sxsw notetaker: the moleskine notebook.