(Also see Update below.)
Last Week, I Noted I Had a High-Risk (but “audacious”) goal for True — and came up with a way to take most of the risk away.
True Business
Why I’ve Removed Google’s Ads
It’s a Matter of Control.
As of today, I’ve turned off Google’s “Adsense” service on this site.
This is True went online in the first half of 1994, so True has been in business longer than many big names in the Internet biz, including Google (1998). As a classic feature column, I received (and turned down) syndication offers from two different newspaper syndicates, including one of the biggest in the business, because I wanted full control of True’s publication rights — including its online presence. I’m not about to let Google control what I write about in this context!
Forging My Own Path
What Would You Include as significant milestones in the “history” of weird news?
Cut Out the Middleman
While Looking for Something Else, I came across this letter from a reader dated May 30 …2005:
“Only in Premium”
The Minor Format Change introduced last week brought a lot of positive comments. Just one example: “Love, love, love the new way you tease the ‘missing’ Premium stories.” —Mark in New Jersey. That’s awfully nice. But, of course, there were protest unsubscribes last week because I stopped gathering all the “stories you missed” summaries into a large paragraph, and instead left their story slugs up among the full stories, and included a brief summary of the story there. A few examples:
Webby Come Lately
In June, This is True celebrates 21 years online — a pioneer in online publishing that predates Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the vast majority of other web sites you can find online today.
Know Thy Enemy
A Letter from Roland in Kent, England (where my family name comes from), really got spinning through my mind, because it really helps to put everything in perspective. Let me explain — starting with Roland’s letter (the italics are from the original):
Writers Write
In a discussion group I frequent, one of the members posed a link, and wondered:
“Not sure if the writers here see the need for this….”
The Pomplamoose Problem
An Interesting Article on the site Artist Empathy (yeah, I hadn’t heard of it before either) discusses “The Pomplamoose Problem”…
Ask Me Anything
A reader thought I should go on Reddit and do an AMA, or “Ask Me Anything” event. I do have a Reddit account, but I’ve been far from active there, and I’m a bit dubious that I’m known there. It’d be pretty icky to do an AMA and not have anyone show up. But after pondering it for several months, I thought I’d do an AMA outside of Reddit, and invite the Premium subscribers to ask the questions.
20 Years …and Counting
This Week Marks a Huge Milestone for This is True: the end of its 20th year. It started as a bulletin board item outside my office at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The first one, dated 26 June 1994, was written to go into my business plan — I hadn’t actually gotten distribution set up. As I was working on the tech, I kept writing a new column each week and, when it went online in July 1994, it was an instant hit, quickly ramping up in circulation.
Facebook: Starting to Circle the Drain?
Facebook is about to get worse — a lot worse — and I think my days there are numbered. I can’t be the only publisher getting ready to give up.
Keep the Premium Tagline Challenge?
Once per month, there’s an extra story in the Premium edition without a tagline, so that readers can try their hand at ending the story. I call it the Reader Tagline Challenge, and the readers come up with a wide variety of funny endings to the extra story.
End of One Era, Start of Another
While doing my research this week, I stumbled across an interesting tidbit: Paramount Pictures has become the first major film studio to announce that it will no longer be distributing movies on film, and is going exclusively to digital distribution.
Ground Control to Major Tom
It’s been forever since I’ve written a “What I’ve been reading lately” blurb. You’ll like what has been on my tablet lately. (It’s amusing that while putting this in my blog software and having to choose categories, both “Away From Work” and “True Business” seem appropriate. Read on, and you’ll understand!)
A True Milestone: 1000 Weekly Issues
The 11 August 2013 issue — Issue 1000 — brought a new look to This is True: as promised nearly two years ago, plain text is out, and “simple HTML” is in. I introduced it to the Premium subscribers this way:
Premium Subscribers Demand:
Raise the Price!
It has nearly been a decade since the price for a Premium upgrade changed — it went to $24. Premium subscribers themselves have said it’s too cheap. I wanted some detail, and was boggled by what they told me.
The Return of Paul Myers
OK, my old buddy Paul hasn’t gone anywhere, but I’ve talked about him before on this blog, and it’s time I talked about him again. He’s the type of friend that if I make a quick phone call to him (as I did today, to catch up), we end up gabbing for over an hour. Sometimes three.
Unusual Unsubscribes
When people unsubscribe from This is True, they have the opportunity to leave comments. Most don’t, and oddly some think they “have to” (I mean really: “No comment.”?) And of course some use it as an opportunity to protest — like when I tell the truth that they don’t want to hear.
Hints on Advertising in This is True
I’ve been meaning to write this up for some time, and with the holiday ad season ramping up, now’s the time.
I’ve had some of the savviest people in the world advertising in This is True — Seth Godin, the first online marketer ever, was actually the first, way back in 1994. I’ve also had some really clueless (in a business sense) advertisers. Most, of course, have been somewhere in between. Here’s a quick review on how to help your ad buy achieve the best result it can.