I was spending some time this afternoon reviewing the logs for my site. (Typepad's logs are not great, so I use Measuremap). I am always curious to see who is linking to me, and how folks are finding my blog.
I was intrigued to see that a new referrer had sent me many readers over the last few days. An article at Bill Myers Online entitled "Pitching Your Product to Google" had been pointing people to my post about how to help us do business together by sending a well-composed email.
However, when I went to click on it and read Bill's take on my post, I was asked to subscribe for $24.95 for three months. Yikes.
This was a little frustrating. I don't want to get into the copyright aspects, etc, because I am no real student of those laws. Nevertheless, and more importantly, I am frustrated as a blogger. I publish to start a conversation, to hear reaction. It bothers me to think that the other half of the conversation is locked behind a walled garden. Even the NYTimes allows permalinking behind their gates.
Don't get me wrong. I am all for people making a living with newsletters, etc. I love relatively independent content. I look forward to the day when Google gets so good at AdSense that subscriptions are no longer needed to monetize valuable writing. However, for as long as those works are about or are derivatives of a conversation from my blog, I think it is fair to explore ways to include my readers.
I sent an email to Bill. I will let you know what I hear.
Update: Bill emailed me to say that the link was contained in a discussion forum on his site and not one of his posts. I appreciate his quick turnaround, but still don't get why the forum would be gated. Anyway, it was nice to see someone be so responsive.