Webomatica

 

Getting Paid to Blog

December 15th, 2006

Uh, so lately I’ve been seeing more and more “get paid to blog” type deals. Here’s a company called BlogKits that seems to be yelping in my general direction.

They claim to serve up well-paying ads to bloggers who aren’t marketers and just want to write. TechCrunch goes a little deeper, getting the founder (who looks a bit like Ricky Gervais) to mention that their target blogger is someone who gets 100 visits a day and $10 over six months with Google AdSense. I can’t say anything about ads but those numbers are well below mine.

I then came across an article from Mashable! about how to make money from social sites. There is the mention of PayPerPost (they pay you to do reviews, with or without disclosure), BlogBurst (seems to aggregate blog articles to “old media” outlets that haven’t figured out blogging is technically pretty easy), and ScooptWords (lets people buy your articles). All variations on a theme, which is the temptation of more exposure in return for cash.

But there’s a larger issue of how I would really benefit, besides the potential cash. My hosting is ten bucks a month and the day job covers all costs. Plus, I wouldn’t want to annoy what few readers I have with ads, or start looking like a splog, which I’m morally opposed to.

Basically, my web projects aren’t motivated by money. Although I joke about the “net worth” of this blog, when it comes down to it, I’m ambivalent. I recall a brief stint I had selling cellphones in retail and how the manager would play these ridiculous games like: “The next person that sells a cell phone wins all the cash my wallet!” That was the worst job I ever had, especially when some poor customer would try to return a phone they were strong-armed into buying and I’d have to break them the news they had a binding contract.

Money can be a great motivator… for screwing your fellow neighbor over. But on a lighter note, going nutty with the ads would probably be a distraction from concentrating on what really matters to me: decent writing and having fun.

Which is why I wrote up my Webomatica goals for 2007. One item was “maintain my integrity – I won’t ’sell out’ or diverge from the purpose described on my About page.” I don’t think more ads would help me with any of my goals, and may actually hurt my feeble grabs at more traffic and increasing my Technorati rank by scaring away potential readers. I can handle being called an “Apple fanboy” but definitely not a shill.

Anyhow, in the interest of fairness, I probably should spend some time investigating some of these outfits and doing blog posts about them. I meant to do this a while ago with PayPerPost but got sidetracked watching James Bond films and writing about cats and Macintosh. I suppose just as money isn’t a big motivator for me, these companies that are trying to “monetize” stuff aren’t terribly interesting to me, either.

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  • Even though I'm not in it for the money as well, which I freely admit there's not much of, I've been surprised by how the extra incentive of running Adsense can be a motivator. Each post I write becomes another potential avenue for revenue. While that's not my primary goal, it does act as a nice background nudge.
  • Hi tunequest... yes, I do have the AdSense going on as well but I think that's all I'll do for now. Nice that you're looking at it as a motivator. It does bring to life the concept of "a penny for your thoughts" and "my two cents" :)

    Congrats on 9rules... BTW
  • Well,
    my blog is quite small (I'm happy to have something more than 100 visitors a day) and I thought for an adsense... but I decided that I wouldn't have got nothing but few dollars a years.
    I don't blog for money... maybe for fame, maybe just because I like having a shoutbox!
    I personally think that money-driven blog are less interesting, because I don't get the "written-from-the-heart" style. Maybe I'm wrong...

    Cheers
  • Carlo I agree with you about "keeping it real." If I were in this blog solely for money, I'd be writing about cellphones, ring tones, home mortgages, and how to make money through adsense...those are high paying ads. And then I might have more money but less fun and less enjoyment out of blogging (not to mention, I know nothing about any of those subjects).

    Still, you might be surprised with adsense for your blog - the ads are relatively unobtrusive (hopefully this blog is an example).

    Then there is subtle entertainment factor for bizarre ads. I think I post too much (or about too many different subjects) since sometimes I see ads for Gilmore Girls DVDs appearing in my Apple iPhone posts :)
  • so...
    ...are you silently tell me to try adsense? :D

    Good Night!
  • Whoooooops.... did I sound like a shill? Well, it's up to you. I think you know where to find them at Google. I've found it to be really easy to set up and as Tunequest mentioned, it's strangely motivating... although at times it's like watching grass grow (for me, anyways).
  • I think it's going to be about becoming partners with the right companies, who basically run ads, but pay you to do so. Exposure and views, are a key too. The bad thing about the free WP sites, they won't let you make any money off of them. I can see their point, they are offering a "free service" to the bloggers. I found out the hard way last week when they shut me off for violation of the TOS. :)

    Rex
  • Hi Rex, ouch... well, that is another angle to this thread. I certainly don't judge anybody else for wanting to do the ad thing (this post is more my musings on why I do it to certain level) ... but everyone should have the choice.

    If you ever so desire, it's not very hard or expensive anymore to get your own hosting and for your blog... all you need is one that runs pHp and MySql so you can run WordPress on it (or many other types of CMSs), and many even have easy installation methods. It takes a little while to get it all up and running but I was able to do it pretty quickly. The hardest part was designing the theme.

    Anyhow thanks for commenting... and I'll check out your blog sometime...
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