AOC Readers Get Respect, Great Content No Attack Ads

Many web owners and webmasters are reading The Pummeling Pages, a damnation by Brent Simmons of the current state of so much web content and typical websites.

The site has good writing. But the pages do everything possible to convince people not to try. “Don’t bother,” the pages say. “It’s hopeless. Oh — and good luck not having a seizure!”

They’re filled with ads and social-media sharing buttons — and more ads. And Google plus-onesies and Facebook likeys. And also more ads. Plus tweet-this-es. Plus ads. (And, under-the-hood, a whole cruise-ship-full of analytics. The page required well-more than 100 http calls.)

While we, too, struggle to be creative in developing a revenue strategy, the fight against this invasion of our brains has always been front and center in my relationship with the ‘advisers’ who have called me crazy and lacking strategy in my web vision.

Having built a core group of 250,000 high-quality readers — and climbing quickly — 2012 will be our year for revenue. We are launching a goddess-inspired jewelry collection, to support our telling of women’s history. We have obtained a nonprofit arts sponsor with Fractured Atlas and will be expanding AOCCares.org. Several publishing projects are on the drawing board; and we are focused on finding high-quality sponsors.

We’ve been consistent around a single idea at AOC -- and it is YOU, our friends and readers. We’ve never played games with readers, never chased them around the page with ‘attack ads’, never participated in link farm games and avoided web relationships that define our own character, with their strategies.

As a result, our website growth is organic and for real. Our web stats are heavenly and readers appreciate our not trying to co-op their brains with pure clutter.