Apr
18
Do Advertisers Even Deserve Bloggers?
April 18, 2008 |
Clearly it is Friday and we all know what that means: it’s time for a good bitchmeme and who better to bring it to us than Louis Gray (who seems to be conspicuously often involved in these) himself. Lately the Friday bitchmemes have been drowned out by some real news, which is really a shame, given that they have become such a tradition.
So what’s the deal for today: do bloggers have a god-given right to get advertising money?
Here is what Louis has to say about this:
Yet, some bloggers act as if it’s their God-given right to write, post a few ads and start raking in cash. In my opinion, content is absolutely cheap. It costs nothing, except time, to put text on paper or computer screen.
[…]
Those that offer non-unique blogs without significant audience or differentiation might as well not exist as far as ads are concerned. Delivering more posts per day won’t fix that. Following the big, successful networks won’t do that. Spamming and trackback abuse won’t fix that.
Besides the contentious title, though, Louis does have some pretty reasonable arguments here - and if you read my blog regularly, you know I fully agree with him that blogs without original thought, a blog is doomed from the beginning.
There is a whole world out there of bloggers who don’t want to or can’t write original content but still try to rake in money from ads: blog spammers - the folks that use Comment Kahuna to get ‘traffic’ and ‘boost their search engine rankings.’ Of course, the real money is only made by those writing for that group, but that’s for a different post. With the help of some good SEO and blog spamming, you can probably make a few bucks from me-too blogging (and maybe with PayPerPost as well…).
But a regular small blog with 1000 views a day (and with RSS feeds, conversations shifted to other services etc, who even knows what those numbers mean anymore), isn’t going to make the big bucks.
Probably part of the problem here is that there is a disconnect between what some people think their content is worth and the buck fifty CPM Google is willing to give them…
Yet, as Mathew Ingram also points out - what’s wrong with making a few dollars to pay for hosting? That’s what my ads do here and I expect nothing more from them.
As I have said before (hey - nobody said bitchmemes had to be original!) - the real benefits of blogging are secondary benefits. Here is what Louis says about that and I couldn’t agree more:
The goals must be somewhere else, whatever they may be for the individual, be it a hobby, setting up for the “next” job, continued writing practice, or enjoying the community.
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[…] but more that ad networks haven’t realized just how drastically the game has changed. As Frederic also points out Probably part of the problem here is that there is a disconnect between what some people think […]
Wait, what, you get a buck fifty CPM on GoogleAds?
Do you have pictures of Eric Schmidt with a goat, perhaps?
I think every blogger should start with the “Donate” button and then graduate to ads when their traffic justifies it. As a reader I sometimes wish bloggers like yourself and Louis had “Donate” buttons on your blogs. I would be more than happy to pick up your hosting tab for a month or two every now and then as a “thank you” for producing such a great blog.
I click your ads for the sole purpose of trying to generate income for you, I do that at all my favorite blogs (where available, ahem Louis) while rarely having any interest in the ad itself… but that makes me feel dirty. I would much rather you get more than 3 cents out of my visit and I would rather be able to pay you for your work personally, but that’s just me.