Monday, September 15, 2008

earnmoney97

Is Money the Root of All Evil? (Writing with Purpose)
I have been writing in this blog for just about a year, and I have been through a number of changes:
The blog was once on a subdomain of my company, and now has its own domain. I started at infrequent posts, then went to 2-3 posts a week, and now am at 5-6 posts per week. The topics have changed as my voice has developed and my experience has grown.
I have thought a long time about what the purpose of my writing really is. It does not build my client list, so it’s not for promoting my business. (Although, in all fairness, I rarely promote myself on this site.) It hasn’t produced income for me. It hasn’t opened up new job opportunities. It has introduced me to a lot of really wonderful people that I have been glad to message back and forth with. It has helped me sort thoughts in my head and put them into words in a more focused way. Being responsible for posts on a regular schedule and extras such as the Carnival of the Capitalists has made my writing production more disciplined. So I guess you could say that blogging has been more of a writing exercise or a hobby for me for the past year, rather than an actual job.
This is where I got to the point of advertising. I have been debating advertising for a long time, and the debate had taken a new intensity since rebranding the site on its own. While having additional income for my efforts would be nice, there are many cons to putting ads on my site.
Advertising is a Distraction
Unlike linking to more content which would provide value to my readers, advertisements just take them to a place where they will be sold something. I suppose if these things are of value to them (what small business owner doesn’t need supplies or a computer or search engine services?), then that is not too bad.
Blogging is about Trust
For me, placing ads on my site would require very strict control over the content. I couldn’t use a program like AdSense because with small business content, those scammy work at home ads were bound to pop up. The only way I would feel comfortable hosting advertisers is if I had a strict system for selecting exactly which ads and offers would appear on my site. I would then not have to worry about the trust I have built being destroyed by unscrupulous advertisers. I would not accept things like link-buying or paid content, because without transparency I feel like that erodes trust.
Aesthetics are Important
If I didn’t care what my site looked like, I wouldn’t have paid an artist to design it or hand-code all the templates myself. I see so many blogs out there where advertising has just taken over, and it makes me not want to come back to that site. It is easy to do ads the wrong way, and have your site take a turn for the worse. Recently, on BusinessPundit (not to pick on Rob May, because he has no control over the advertising on that site), there were some talking ads that completely altered the experience of the site, and popups that showed up some time after that. I would want to keep my site as distraction-free as possible to make it a unique viewing experience.
Money Shouldn’t Drive Content
If you read a lot of the stuff put out by those internet marketers, they develop their content based on what will sell. They write posts based on Google popularity, SEO keywording, and other false ways of beefing up traffic. I’d never want to be in that situation, to be writing about what is popular just for the sake of increased advertising traffic. By writing for myself, I get to stay true and honest—to write for writing’s sake.
Evaluating my Peers
There are a lot of people that I respect and content that I value that does have ads, like Anita Campbell at Small Business Trends, Rob May at BusinessPundit, Guy Kawasaki at How to Change the World, and Darren Rowse at Problogger (the advertising juggernaut that teaches other writers to advertise!). There are also others that don’t, like Charles H Green at Trust Matters, Chris Anderson at The Long Tail and, well, Rob May at Coconut Headsets. (It is interesting to note that when he started writing for different reasons than he does at Business Pundit, and while he is writing for himself, the ads became less important.) Looking at their sites helps me decide what I do and don’t like, but it doesn’t help me with outside influence on my decision here.
Being True to Myself
I start out this year 2008 with a mission to never settle for less than 100% quality in everything I do here on Small Business Essentials. I continued this commitment by adding the links feed, extending my site to other platforms like Facebook and Twitter, participating in the business blogosphere, and creating (what I consider) to be original, valuable content. Somehow, the thought of monetizing this site through third part advertising diminishes that in some way. This may be only an internal perception, however—perhaps my own issues with money cloud my judgement of what is real in this case.
Limiting my Options
If I choose to not monetize the site, it makes me more actively seek out other ventures that would be income-producing. In this way, it is enticing to keep this blog as my writing playground and to use other means to expand revenue. (That revenue, then, would go back into funding this little hobby blog of mine.)
The Future of Small Business Essentials
I have decided to try a few hand-selected advertising items for the time being to try it out while I consider if this is really what do to. After about a day of thought on this subject, and as of right now, I am leaning towards removing them again and just continuing to write as I always have. I will give it a few weeks to make this decision though, and if the ads are permanent, I may have to do another site redesign to make them fit better with the site.
Thoughts?
I’d love to hear feedback on the ads as they are now, your blog/monetization strategy, the purpose of writing, or anything else for that matter.

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