Okay, okay, I get it. I'm a bad blogger. I don't include "Tweetables" at the bottom of every post. I don't (yet) have my posts categorized. Most of my earlier, and some of my newer, posts were written too much like humor columns to be considered anything other than anti-SEO (Search Engine Optimization, the magic foo-foo that makes your stuff appear at the top of peoples' Google results pages). I don't use Affiliate link goodness.
I'm never going to get rich off of this blog, is what I'm saying.
Second verse: I'm okey-dokey hunky-doodle-dory with that. I write for pleasure, both yours and mine. I write for practice. I don't write this blog, though, for profit.
At one point I installed the cool little advertising snap-in and watched my revenue skyrocket to nearly three whole bucks in a month. Then I thought about what I was doing--allowing ads for products I've neither chosen nor used to appear on my page, and then being paid by the ad program, who in turn earned their money from the product hockers, who hoped that you would make a purchase in whatever retail-oriented area your click on the ad took you to.
That's not what I wanted to do. I wanted you here, reading my stuff.
Which is, I guess, why it annoys me when I see others doing it. In this case, Rachelle Gardner's post this morning is a perfectly-done advertisement. The guy starts off writing about how we authors try feebly to hock our books on our own web pages, then he explains the problems with that method, and then he introduces a solution--his company's solution--to "a better way to sell your books."
It's a perfectly-done pitch, I think. It's just like one of those pages in magazines that have "advertising content" or some such scrawled across the top, only with links to videos and the place to get it. Only it doesn't have the disclaimer. It's wrapped up like an informational piece, and then wham! It tries to sell you something.
RG's blog has been so helpful, so information-full, in the past; I highly recommend reading through her content on the industry and on the writing process. I guess I just get disappointed when the advertising copy flickers by.
Konrath has been doing a lot of that, too. When I started reading him, he was the foul-mouthed anti-establishmentarian of the book blogging world. Now, most of his blog posts contain a pitch for this or that web site or one of his cover artist friends who's having a "fire sale."
It makes me sad to see great informational blogs going commercial. But then again, I have to consider whether I'm not the wrong one. Maybe I'm a bad blogger....
- TOSK
Haven't read RG's or JK's blogs today yet, as I do that from home in the evenings rather than from work. However, I fully agree with you concerning monetizing my own blog. I haven't done it, and don't plan on doing it.
ReplyDeleteGood post.