If you want to understand just why I was so chuffed to be included in the TBEX Community Keynote last weekend, go to Nerd’s Eye View and have a read of the other pieces. They’re all ridiculously good.
I still see and hear people get sniffy against travel blogging. I still see and hear a few people mutter “oh, it’s from a personal blog, is it? Oh well then.” I still watch nostrils flare and noses turn up at the suggestion that self-published, non-commissioned, initially-for-the-hell-of-it travelwriting can sing anywhere near like the average paper-clad travelogue. Patronising rather than malicious – smirky rather than lip-curling. But it’s there.
And those people really need to wake up.
Image: anniemole
Agreed. There is as much good writing and thinking on blogs nowadays as in magazines. Yes, there is also tripe, but some of the stinkiest tripe is in paper pubs that you pay for.
I think we need to aim for acceptance of ads because who in the universe ever made it our right to receive information, entertainment and stimulation on someone else’s dime? Now that the Times of London is charging, it’s bound to be only a matter of time (how can you say that without a pun?) until blogs are all you can see without a paid subscription. Maybe Fox News will die. I can dream…
That’s a dream of mine, too. (Barring Shep Smith. I’m not sure what he’s doing on Fox, since he’s smart, witty and deeply sane).
Paid subscriptions are one way of doing it, and newspapers are tinkering, but as a philosophy it’s a bit anti Web 2.0 in that it prevents you from getting content in the first place (yes, we’re spoilt because everything is free, but the cat’s out the bag now). If it’s streamlined into something we hardly notice, a payment mechanism that is so slick it’s almost fun to pay money through it, then it could work. But…I dunno. And the Web on the whole is very cagey, if I’m any judge. New ways are being hunted down.
And ads? There’s good ways and bad ways, seamless and invasive, informative and spammy, and to make any kind of living, writers and bloggers are going to have to pick a course through them. Definitely. You’re right. They need to be accepted, but not blindly – they need to fit.
I earn between 150 and 300 a month (in a good month) on ads. Google doesn’t like text links, I’ve phased out selling them, but they’re also the type of ads that most people who contact me want to buy, so that’s frustrating as hell. I don’t write for Google, but I have to earn my money in a way Google likes? Maddening.
I don’t think the readers are critical of ads per se. I think that if, like any good publication, we consider what we’re saying yes to in ad copy/images, then it makes sense. And if we don’t run advertorial, aren’t beholden to our advertisers for our stories, etc ad infinitum, there’s no reason ads can’t be a-okay.
That’s a good turnover for ads.
Yes, image-based banner ads are the way to go. Looking into, myself. Much more clickable too, as well as search engine friendly. (Google doesn’t like text links? That’s news to me).
Advertorial can be ugly. I remember the Readers Digest howlers from years back – and the ones currently hugging the back halves of National Geographic, which are flagged up as Special Advertising Features and given a different font and look (tolerable – and sometimes a good read).
Regarding online material – tricky. For small-scale bloggers I can understand sponsored blogging (which I’ve done, and would again, if the sponsor let me say what I thought) and other in-blog promotional material. But the worst of it is just…suicidally Corporate. Pick well, but also make it fit you.
Voice matters. Opinions matter. Voice + opinion = reputation. Reputation matters. Reputation gets money. Rewind, play back, sing along.
What depresses me most isn’t that good writing isn’t being appreciated – it’s that bad writing is. And that’s going to set standards.
“Voice matters. Opinions matter. Voice + opinion = reputation. Reputation matters. Reputation gets money. Rewind, play back, sing along.” This is the new mantra, so for now I blog for fun. I say my piece and if people want to pay, they want to pay but I’m not going to be dependent on it for income. I just can’t right now.
Well, Mike, talk to me about banners and text links and what Google does and doesn’t like. My goal is $15K in advertising revenue this year and I’m on target but unfortunately, banner ads are less and less preferred and text links are what everyone wants.
I don’t do sponsored content (it wouldn’t live up to my quality standards, don’t allow guest posts because it would mean giving u p control and god forbid I would lose control, and I never sell contextual links within the body of a blog post. I want my readers to trust me when I link to someplace that it is because I have a belief in the product, firm, or service that I am linking to, not because I was paid.
I make so little on my writing – which is my passion – that I am forced to go down the commercial advertising route. But I can honestly say that I’ve never had a single complaint abut the ads from any reader, not even when I first began adding them. I think people understand we have to find a way to subsidize our writing and I for one, am delighted that there are ways for me to get paid so that I can continue to do what I love so much.
And on that note, let me congratulate you for your inclusion in the Keynote. I was sitting in the audience listening to Pam read. By the end of the first sentence I knew they were your words and I smiled to myself, thinking how fortunate I was to have known about your exquisite writing long, long ago.
We’ve chatted about these things further, so no need to keep restating how grateful I am for your advice.
But I am. Very much so.
I always assume that people who dismiss travel blogging because it’s personal just don’t know what they’re talking about. I mean… why would anyone prefer an impersonal travel story?
As for monetizing… I have yet to dip my foot in that pool. For the moment, I don’t see it happening. It takes a lot of energy and time commitment.