Friday, July 14, 2023

The future of content creation on blogs in 2023

I saw a post from the blog website Vintage is the New Old this week announcing they are closing down the site. I was naturally sad to see this. I thank them for their work, and wish the creators well for the future. 

I am not at all surprised by the reasons why they are closing it down. It touched a nerve with me, so I wanted to make a small comment about it.

I have been creating content on this blog for over 11 years now, and like Vintage is the new old, recently receive little feedback on this site or on social media about it. I know plenty of people are regularly reading from the website stats, but few are commenting.

I realise the importance of social media platforms in this modern era, and the easy to consume clickbait feeds and stories on Tik Tok, You Tube, Facebook, Twitter, Mastodon, Discord, Telegram, Snapchat, WhatsApp, Line, QQ, and other platforms too. I am active on most of them.

I am aware of this trend, that many people prefer quick and easy to consume content over something they have to actually spend significant time to read. Fortunately there are still people who do want something significant to read. Take a look in your local bookshop sometime...

My content is generally quite detailed with lots of photos and screenshots I take to show what is happening so the reader can follow along and try it themselves easily. Explaining in a video would be hard, and would lose a lot of information. Wiki's are useful, but dry and usually lack step by step photos and other content to help with understanding.

I tried out live streaming and video creation for a while during Covid lockdowns but I didn't enjoy it as much. Connecting retro systems for live streaming has it's technical challenges with custom screen resolutions and interlace modes that impact the kinds of content that can be streamed from real hardware. 

I find writing detailed content comes naturally to me and is more satisfying personally. I refer back to my own content too when I forget how I did something!

I promote my Epsilon's World blog posts across Facebook primarily as I found most of my readership comes from Amiga and Retro computer groups there. I post on Twitter too, and show work in progress updates from time to time ahead of new blog posts on Instagram. I should post more on Discord as well, but generally groups I am a member of there just reflect a smaller subset of the same people on the respective associated Facebook groups.

I used to promote on Amiga forum sites, but very few visit from them anymore as many moved across to Facebook groups for easier interaction, so I stopped doing that. I rarely visit forum sites anymore myself too in 2023, which is sad and shows how things have changed. 

I take great pride, effort and time in creating new original content that is of interest to me, and hopefully to you as well.

I make no money from creating this content for you all. I buy almost everything you see or read about on this blog from my own hard earned money from my day job. 

Tik Tok and YouTube content creators make more money than I could ever hope to with my day job, and spend far less time generally to create it as well. 

Good luck to them. 

I know creating original (not advertisements) video content can be hard work too - I have tried it. As long as the creator remain flavour of the month with the YouTube (or whatever) advertising fund distribution algorithm controls their content promotion to their audience, they can enjoy their (usually) brief time in the sun if they go viral. Building a sustainable audience for ongoing income on these platforms is hard work though.

People are also taking my photos from my blog posts and using them on their own posts in social media without permission or acknowledging me as the creator of it. Some are being linked to video content not created by me. Perhaps they are monetising this also, I don't know. 

When I find out and approach them about the theft, I am told by some of the people stealing my photos for their own purposes that I should be flattered as my photos are great and the "best we could find". 

Well, in that case, please respect my copyright over my photos and content, and ask for permission first before using them. I am usually ok with it if asked first, and usually just asked to be acknowledged as the creator with a link to epsilonsworld.com. 

I could put big ugly watermarks on my photos, and in the long distant past I used to do that, but since it is so easy to crop them out and "erase them" in Photoshop, it hardly seems worth the time to add them to every photo these days.

So, given all this, why do I do this blog still then?

I do it because I love doing it. 

Especially when I get positive feedback about what I have done, feedback about things I missed, or features I didn't know about, or other options I hadn't considered. It inspires me to try more things! 

I enjoy the occasional post engagement and PM's on Facebook when I post my blog posts there, and that is what keeps me going at the moment.

Nothing would make me happier than to focus full time on creating content for this blog if I could make enough money from it to avoid having to work a normal day job to cover my bills and of course all the equipment I buy to play with!

Sadly though, the world doesn't work like that. 

I enabled monetisation on the website a few years ago in the hope of building some income towards that goal, but the money received is minimal. Really minimal. I earn more in half a day's work in my day job than I have received in income on my blog from people clicking on ads in the past 5 years. 

Meanwhile AdSense puts horrible ads on my site and throughout my content, which I really hate interfering with my content. I hope you can understand why I did it, even if it gets me little monetary reward. 

Several times over the past 11 years I considered stopping this blog altogether. It consumes a lot of my very precious spare time to create the content you read here, and I could be spending that time playing around with my hobbies even more. 

I have also had to reduce my output in recent years as my work commitments mean I have much less time in 2023 than when I started working on the blog 11 years ago. 

So, I focus on producing more detailed blog posts, but less of them. But I have never stopped blogging. I can't imagine doing that.


I love my computer and train hobbies, and love to create content to share my love of it to the world, and to help people out who want to try the same thing. 

I like to think that by creating detailed content rather than sound bites, Instagram/Facebook stories, or You Tube/Tik Tok videos, you may learn something from my content that inspires you or someone you know to try something with your own systems or try something you never tried before. 

You may also see what I am doing is not the way to do it, and want to help me to understand where I am going wrong! Happy to know this too!

Whether you care or not about my content, constructive feedback is an important motivator for continuing to create content here, so please don't let me toil away in total silence if you have something of value to contribute. I'd love to hear from you.

Content creators who create original content for free are precious resources in a modern world of consumers who often don't create anything themselves, or expect to be paid for content creation, or paid for "content" like social media influencers, who in my view create nothing useful at all. 

Please don't ever forget that we are human and want interaction too. Otherwise soon enough, there will be no new content to read in your feeds and you will be left reading all the old free original content via the internet archive website or it will just disappear....


34 comments:

  1. I think i'm part of the big silent majority. I really enjoy reading your posts and watching your photos whatever they talk about Amiga, trains, or anything else, but - I admit - without interacting.
    Maybe you could add extensions to your blog for more interactions (something like a Thumb Up options, or something like that) or - even better - tips :) (like https://ko-fi.com/) (I don't have personel interest with this site; I've just discovered it on other blogs).
    In any case please keep on writing :)
    Greetings from Paris, France

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    1. Thank you so much for your feedback and suggestions! I will look into the thumbs up or tips option.

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  2. Hi, I'm familiar with your conundrum friend. And I share Scan-Xs' input on quick and easy access to feedback features. Commenting like this is OK, but I'm guessing the threshold for many to actually engage and write is a step too far.

    Personally I avoid tiktok, facebook and 'shorts' of most kind as I feel it just feeds into our collective ADHD behaviour.

    Keep up your writing, and primarily do it for your own benefit. I for one appreciate it.

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    1. Thanks for your feedback and thanks for reading!

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  3. I really enjoy reading your various posts and as someone who has come back to the Amiga in the last 5yrs, the information gained has been very helpful. I write for a living and I also have a gaming blog mainly to write about games as it's quite different from my day job. When I find a blog that I like, I bookmark them and visit quite often. I also find sites like Indie Retro News are a great way to keep up with the various retro game releases and Twitter has been quite helpful for daily hardware/gaming news.

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    1. I am glad you are enjoying my blog. Thanks for your comment!

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  4. From France (too), know that I really like reading your blog (especially everything related to Amiga of course) :). Photos are really nice and all your articles are really well written!

    Thanks for sharing all this with us!

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  5. From local adelaide. Your blog has become an Amiga staple for many and your dedication and passion to all things Amiga is undeniable. I often refrecene your blog when i find an old part on ebay or the latest on an overseas website to see if you have written an article on it and I find amazing technical write up complete with photos that show me high res detail. Keep up the good work !

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    1. I am really glad to read this feedback - I am happy my blog is useful for you! Thanks for your kind feedback - I will do my best!

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    2. On a side note, i was wondering if you have an opinion on the A-EON A1222+ ? Im considering pre-order but the track record for the product has not been great, i can see they have released new press stating production is about to start but they said that to early adopters in 2020. Is the board worth a look or a better recommendation ?

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    3. It depends on what you expect from the A1222 system. Performance wise you can expect similar to the Sam 460cr, although the A1222 is faster for some things. Both are much faster and more flexible than running AmigaOS 4.1 in emulation or PowerPC accelerated classic Amiga systems. Spending more on the AmigaOne X5000 is worthwhile if your budget allows, since it opens up better performance for the newer released games, higher resolution 720p/1080p video playback, allows via higher end ATI graphics cards using the latest Warp3D Nova drivers, and high end Classic Amiga UAE emulation (040/060) is better for demos and games on the X5000. I hope this helps.

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  6. I'm just another silent reader and I thank You so much for your passion for the Amiga world. Greetings from Piedmont, Italy

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    1. Thank you for your kind feedback! Very much appreciated. I hope you continue to enjoy my blog!

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  7. Another silent reader here, this time from Tennessee in the US. Your blog has been a huge help to me in my exploration of all things Amiga. I enjoy the fusion between new and old hardware. I appreciate your detailed, long-form posts. It seems to be a dying art, with websites becoming SEO traps devoid of genuinely useful content and everyone else on YouTube with today's sponsor Squarespace and/or PCBWay. But I can see how audience engagement would be an issue with the blog format.

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    1. Thanks for your kind feedback about my blog. I try to cover new and old hardware. I know the Amiga and C64 stuff is more popular, but I try to cover all areas that interest me! I am glad to hear you are enjoying my blog!

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    2. I am glad to hear it! I want to do more train content. I have a bunch of train trips I did that I didn't blog about - the Amiga is a demanding mistress on my spare time! I will try to find some time to do more train blog posts soon though - I have some amazing train trip plans this year.

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  8. I am subscribed to your RSS feed and I never miss an article. Please continue to write and Amiga for ever!

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    1. Thanks for your kind feedback about my blog. I am glad to hear you are enjoying my Amiga articles - there are plenty more to come. :-)

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  9. Love the site and appreciate your content. Please continue to keep the dream alive!

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    1. Thanks for your kind words. I will continue to do my best - lots more Amiga stuff to explore!

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  10. I also lurk (sorry) but I use your information and share it it with Amiga users who need help here in SACC

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    1. Glad to know that my content is helping SACC members! I hope you continue to enjoy my blog.

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  11. I don't know but I can say that I agree with you what you say about influence several platforms have on new generations. I m out of most of that because I don't want any of those platforms influence my life. People don't want to read more than 2 sentences but still they will sit in front of the doctor with 40 years of experience to show him that they know better than him about what's wrong with them. I wonder how people collect knowledge in today's world. When I say to someone that I will give him a book to read where he can find all the answers, he just looks at me like I m an idiot. People expect big things for no effort. Glory they get on social media is get and lost very quickly. They can't handle those loses and then they dive into depression. People don't respect anything anymore, nature especially. They travel like suitcases, not even looking outside of the window. And when they get there if there is no picture online, it never happened. Just like they travel not for personal joy but to show online everyone that they can. Topics are many but I like to think that our work on our blogs is heritage for generation after this one, who will finally take one step back and understand that without effort and global contribution to real research nothing exist.

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    1. Thank you for your kind words about my blog. I agree that some people seem to prefer to get all the answers for little effort. People ask me questions sometimes related to my blog post when the answer was in the blog post - they clearly didn't read it and just wanted a quick answer. I am glad you find value in my blog posts! Thanks for reading :-)

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  12. Well, I absolutely love your site! I don't comment often though.. but I try to read it often. I have learned a lot about Amiga and other classic machines, and have used some of your notes/guides on emulation as well! On a side note, I am going to guess that one of your pictures above was taken at the Team Lab Planets exhibit in Tokyo... just a guess.. as I was there in January!

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    1. Good guess! I was indeed at Team Labs Planets exhibit in Tokyo - also in January as it happens! Amazing experience wasn't it? Thanks for your kind feedback on my blog. I hope you continue to enjoy it! :-)

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  13. I for one love your blog! I have learned a lot, and even follow many of your guides / notes on Amiga emulation etc. I just don't comment often. On a side note, I am guessing one of the pictures in this post was taken at the TeamLab Planets exhibit in Tokyo... I was there in January, and I have a similar photo! Thanks again!

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    1. Good guess! I was indeed at Team Labs Planets exhibit in Tokyo - also in January as it happens! Amazing experience wasn't it? Thanks for your kind feedback on my blog. I hope you continue to enjoy it! :-)

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  14. Yours is one of the few sites that I still check faithfully. Your blog is part review, part tutorial and has been a great resource for me over the years. Very cool work you do here! :)

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    1. Thank you so much! I hope you continue to enjoy reading! :-)

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  15. I think reCAPCHA didn't like me, so my first post didn't get published. Short version: great site -- part review, part tutorial. Very useful, well done blog. Thanks for your contribution to the community!

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  16. Keep up the good work. I enjoy reading thoroughly prepared and created content much more than the snippets you get on all those platforms.

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    1. Thank you for your feedback - I do try to write detailed posts as I really enjoy reading the same kind of content. I appreciate attention to detail. I hope you continue to read and enjoy my blog in the future :-)

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