Today I discovered a sobering truth that only marginally relates to my life, but I’ll mention it anyway. You may not know there there a hefty amount of mommy and daddy bloggers – some of my readers perhaps know a few of the more infamous ones – who through ads on their site are getting paid to blog their family stuff (thereby earning the term “professional blogger”). Well, I was sort of aware of this, but apparently there are also a healthy amount of mommyblogger-haters who are simultaneouly blogging about the mommies and daddies. You know, criticizing these parents for exploiting their children shamelessly to make a few bucks (or a bonafide salary) with Google ads. And from my ten minutes checking it out these two factions seemed to be going back and forth, snarking at one another, some of them disallowing comments or deleting ones that don’t meet standards of nicety, many of them seeming to revel in the shit-slinging, padding their blogrolls, and collecting “fanship” of some sort. It’s a small but rather active faction of the Inter-Tron and the whole thing depresses me.
It has never seriously entered my mind to put ads on my site and make money. I could present the scorecard as to why this would be a bad idea for me (my writing = marginally good; my photoblogging equipment = nonexistant; my willingness to keep a cute gimmicked format = not there; my ability to sensationalize my life for profit = weak). The concept of earning money from my blog is only slightly tempting since I have a decent readership here. Or perhaps I should say, the number of people who read my blog is surprisingly high; and the actual people who take the time to talk to me are stellar. But the difference between a well-liked blog with a modest fan base and a money-making blog is a huge gap. Unless I posted pictures of my boobs or made up lies I’m not likely to pull in any decent capital (whoring my blog out has occurred to Ralph and I think he did the math – currently I’d earn something like $5 a month). My entries are enjoyed to the extent they are because I write marginally well and regularly post; even lately I’ve failed to keep my frequency up.* In short, my writings are gratis, and it turns out you get what you pay for.
And the bottom line: if I don’t try to actually make money off my kids by my sarcastic, rapier-like wit, I may just not get publicly hated. Maybe.
(As I typed this, my son was asking my husband for dinner. “Mama has a fresh pizza for us!” Ralph cheerily informs Nels. “You go cook!” the boy orders me, pushing me into the kitchen. Now, why is it that if my girlchild had asserted my social subjugation in this way I would have been less offended?)
* The top reason I don’t read many of my friends’ blogs – because I really, really desire my friends to keep one and keep them well – is the lack of posting frequency or regularity. Reason #2 more distantly follows: content is too poor (boring, navel-gazing, lots of webcam self-shots, bleh).