{"id":642432,"date":"2013-02-14T16:07:47","date_gmt":"2013-02-14T21:07:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/paidcontent.org\/?p=224723"},"modified":"2013-02-14T16:07:47","modified_gmt":"2013-02-14T21:07:47","slug":"the-brainpickings-brouhaha-and-the-problem-with-affiliate-links","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/642432","title":{"rendered":"The Brainpickings brouhaha and the problem with affiliate links"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s been a lot of sound and fury recently<\/a> about a blogger named Maria Popova, who makes her living by curating links to smart content on her Brainpickings blog. Popova has been quite vocal about how she doesn\u2019t like traditional advertising<\/a> and instead relies on donations from her readers, in much the same way that former Daily Beast blogger Andrew Sullivan now does<\/a>. But that commitment was recently challenged by an anonymous critic who noted that Popova also gets revenue from affiliate links to sites like Amazon \u2014 and the resulting debate says a lot about the future of both content and advertising.<\/p>\n

One of the reasons why this incident has drawn so much attention is that Popova seems like a great example of the kind of self-sustaining media entity many bloggers \u2014 and even traditional journalists \u2014 aspire to become. While she may not be in the same league as Sullivan, who employs a team to run his Daily Dish blog (and who will be speaking at our paidContent Live<\/a> conference in New York on April 17), the idea that someone can make a living by simply curating excellent content in return for donations is inspiring.<\/p>\n