This isn’t Nightline. This is a blog where the author is free to write about what he wants. IN this particular case he wants to write about the ugly juxtaposition of claiming you need donations to support your ad-free website when the website is sort of not ad-free.

Also personally as someone who works on the financial side of things and does a lot of time working with timesheets and time allocation plans and billable hours and whatnot. There is a zero % chance she is being honest about how much time she spends on this unless she is counting every hour of reading she does as “work for the site” which is kind of disingenuous she she strongly implies that she would be doing the reading regardless.

The idea that she is working on the blog 17 or 20 or 31 hours a day (depending on which estimates of hers you use) is frankly laughable. Does she never do anything that isn’t blog related? No dates? No going to a concert? I find that hard to believe.

Since BrainPickings is not a 501(c)3, it’s not bound by the standards of charity. Even so, the affiliate links are not a scandalous deal. Affiliate linking isn’t even that big of a deal in the case of known 501(c)3 organizations that are explicitly not allowed to advertise. TheCurrent, one of the Minnesota Public Radio stations, routinely places links for purchase of songs on its website – this is not banned under any advertising law. It’s allowed because it does not have an explicit call to action (also how underwriting announcements are distinguished from ads on public radio.) Amazon linking to products spoken about is also very much part of how the public radio site proceeds online – and they do all this while honoring specific laws that do not allow them to advertise. They can make products available for purchase, they just can’t tell you to buy them.

Popova does much the same thing on Brain Pickings, and as a private entity she is not bound by these laws. Brain Pickings offers a thought-provoking blog with really high quality content. It also draws attention to high-quality content. It is not funded by taxpayers, but by its own readers. The readers are getting what they pay for – and what they’re getting is really good stuff. If you read the blog, you’ll see that its audience isn’t going to consist of the naive and silly. BrainPickings is written by a critical thinker for a critical thinker.

So … what’s the problem here with how she’s making her money? Is it just that she’s making money and supporting herself? The money she has isn’t part of the public trust – it’s private donations from private citizens. Now, if the government paid for it, then I’d see the point.

I don’t subscribe to the site but I have visited and have been turned on to books she has curated. The copyright question is valid, but I imagine authors benefit from the excerpts as teasers for the Amazon purchases.

Brainpickings is a bright spot on the web, occupying a unique space, in my opinion. Why not just celebrate that…?

Could that encourage her to link more to products available on Amazon? Yes. Is that the same as a banner ad or sponsored link? No.

That said, Popova should update the text on her site to “ad-free (but with affiliate links)” and end this playground for critiques. She does a brilliant work curating and blogging and it earns the money – be it from links or donations.

“And here’s the thing – I do it not to “build an audience” or “generate revenue” or any of that, but because it gives me enormous joy and stimulation. It makes me excited to wake up and fulfilled to go to bed.”

with a fact

“On top of that, as recently as a couple of months ago, Popova was found to be behind skeevy SEO sites like curesleepapnea.com, gastricbypassrisk.com, and liposuctionrisksinfo.com.”

We’ve come so far that being in the top 1% is now a hurtful insult…

…this is going to end in tears comrades.

a) no numbers answer to a clear numbers question. (“if Amazon gave me even a tenth of that after [tax]” is as close as it gets)

b) no answer remotely relevant to the real issue which is – the site says it’s ad-free and it isn’t ad-free.

Setting aside the absurdly inflated prices for hosting, TypeKit, and the like, she is apparently claiming that she works over 30 hours per day. At New York’s minimum wage of $7.25: (7000/7.25)/31=31.1457. Even giving her an insanely charitable interpretation of “nearly $7,000″ to mean $6,000, that’s still more hours than exist per day.

Can we please stop calling her anything other than a scam artist?