E-Begging

Back in the early days of blogging, since before it was called that, there was a strong community distaste for "monetization", aka earning money from your creations.

That seemed to go away in recent years, as every influencer has some sort of "hustle" (I hate that term, but then I grew up in a time where that was the name of a prominent porn magazine).

With that in mind, I am now shocked to hear that the sentiment has returned but aimed at YouTubers.

Don't get me wrong, there are a LOT of scams out there. I won't name them but even in the retro gaming community, a community of mostly older guys, there are a few infamous examples of influencers taking the hustle into grift territory.

But for the most case it is just people wanting to keep going with their efforts without the bailiffs being called.

For my own part it has made me try to avoid any kind of compensation, but the costs associated with my online tools, especially the server-side costs associated with my online IDE, has made me dip my toes into the water. Google+AI have really stripped back the income I can make from my websites and affiliate commissions, and apparently people don't buy books or courses anymore (I guess they just ask ChatGPT). What is left?

I will try Ko-fi for now, but it really does look like the end of creators getting support from their communities, and the hope for Hive to make anyone a reasonable income vanished with the alt-coin crash!