After a 15-month trial, I have brought the Flick Filosopher–on–Apple News experiment to an end. I had hoped that it would bring in a lot of new readers, as it has reportedly done for other sites (though, to be fair, mostly big corporate ones, which this site is most certainly not). But it never garnered more than a scant handful of views each month, which is not a good return on the time it took to format and post reviews over there, never mind the fact — which always rankled — that I was giving free content to a multibillion-dollar corporation.
The content that I posted there is still there, for now. I may delete it all at some point. But I definitely will not be posting anything new there. I apologize if you were one of the few people who did read my reviews there, but it simply would have been a foolish waste of my time to continue.
If you would like to support my work so that I can continue here — a prospect that is increasingly chancy; things are worse for me financially than they have ever been — please pledge at my Patreon. (I will be adding new tiers and rewards very soon.) Even a single dollar per month can add up, if enough people who are reading and enjoying my work — which is lots of you — kick in.
Thank you.
PREVIOUS: 03.12.18:
As an experiment, I’m starting to add reviews to the new Flick Filosopher channel on Apple News. That’s the app that comes with iOs devices such as iPhones and iPads.
Here’s what it looks like:
I’ve heard that some publishers are getting big boosts in traffic from being on Apple News, so that’s what I’m hoping to see happen here. Pageviews aren’t the issue for this site that they are for one that carries advertising, but it would be lovely if Apple News brought in a ton of new readers who would donate via PayPal, support my Patreon, or bequeath me their millions.
Not all content from the site will appear on the Apple News channel. At the moment, it’s just reviews, though they lack lots of the links you’ll find here at the site proper, and there is no commenting at Apple News. I’m figuring out if I can format the new “here are the women” posts — like this one — in a way that looks nice over there. Stay tuned.
Please check it out if you’ve got Apple toys and let me know what you think.
Looks good! Articles are showing the word “tweet” instead of the logo/link from your articles, and some of the picture cropping is a little awkward around the red/yellow/green logo. But those are the only minor issues I saw when looking through. Otherwise, pretty cool!
What do you mean by this? Where are you seeing the word “tweet”?
Unfortunately I have zero control over how those images get cropped.
Yeah, I figured you likely didn’t have any control over the cropping. Not a big issue, just something I noticed.
The “tweet” issue was something I saw in the Death of Stalin review. I’ve attached a screenshot.
Ah, that’s just an artifact from copying and pasting the text. I’ve deleted it now. Thanks for pointing it out.
I click on apple news each morning for my daily news intake. I like the variety of sources