The Sway is a movement. It is a gentle grass-roots movement, led not by advertisers and ad networks, but by content creators. It is driven by the fact that it is increasingly difficult to make money from publishing content. Unless you have a huge audience and dedicated ad sales team, it can be hard to make a living from content, and with CPM rates sliding down lower and lower, something has got to give.

We here at Skimlinks have a solution to help publishers, but we are not the only option, and our efforts alone aren’t enough to create the required change in the industry. We have been advocating for some time to advertisers and merchants the importance of rewarding content creators for factors other than traffic size, but this movement needs the groundswell force of bloggers and publishers to educate the market and pave the way for new business models.

We believe that part of the solution will be finding a balance between commercialism and editorial, but finding that balance needs debate, self-discipline, and codes of conduct. That is part of what The Sway will be about: how to be commercial without being manipulative to your users.

Our vision for The Sway is it will be part networking for commercial content creators, part learning of what is working for other content creators, and part debate to build up our own industry ethics for how to make money from content in an ethical way. And there will be wine.

Come join us, spread the word. Places are limited and invitation-only, but ask us for an invitation if you’d like to come!