The Art of Selling Out and the Ugliness of Sour Graping

I see women as one of the two greatest wonders of nature that is why I have the tendency to be drawn to women's blogs, click on their faces on Entrecard widgets and follow them (if they prove to be as good as how their EC's look). I think women bloggers are cute; you know, all those stuff of tweaking  and messing around with a blog's innards and trying to tamper with the technical side of things make women bloggers cute to my eyes. This is the reason why I follow more blogs authored by women than blogs authored by men like me. But I am digressing, my real topic is about the art of selling out and the ugliness of sour graping. One of the blogs I secretly  follow (yes, a woman's blog) has this post about people who monitize their blogs. It's not exactly about people but about blogs that are used by people to earn money. The title of her post is Blogging For Readers vs. Blogging For Income. The title intrigued me that is why I read it. By the way she stated things in that post, it seems that she was not really sure about what to say; she said, "Are these sites blogging for readers, or are they blogging simply to generate income? I've even come across a few sites that are no more than promotional pages for one or more products. Do these site actually get return viewers?". Oh, it was like a little jab to my face, I am one of those bloggers who monitize their blogs. What she failed to realize is that income does not come without readers. But her post and her questions are honest enough so I am not taking it against her. What made my ears ring are the comments made by those people who are not earning from their blogs, one of them even called those who have paid posts in their blogs as "stupid".  So I wrote a comment on her post that turned out to be longer than her article. Here is the comment I made : 

People have the right to "not write about products" and just "write about their thoughts" and not earn anything from their blogs. But this does not give them the right to disapprove those who put in their blogs sponsored posts every now and then to earn money. The blogosphere is a free world so no one should feel as if he or she is the only politically correct in that sphere.

As to the kid who said "My blog is solely dedicated to writing my thoughts and views etc and I write for myself - not an audience," here's what I have to say : don't blog! if you are only writing for your self then why publish your "thoughts" in the blogosphere? Write your "thoughts" in a piece of paper the good old fashioned way and keep it in your locker, just don't litter the blogosphere with your private thoughts. And why do you have Entrecard? And why do you drop EC's if you write only for your self? Having an EC is a sign that you want to have audience. 

I am one of those who earn much from my blogs, I do paid posts but I choose the posts I put in  my blogs. I earn big with my blogs but I also make it sure that people will get good things from reading my blogs. Just read the comments of people who pass by my blog,  they tell me that my blog is informative.

This issue is actually old, when PayPerPost came out in 2006, many people of "superior minds" critized the scheme. But PPP survived and the number one critic of PPP, the person behind the blog TechCrunch, even became Ted Murphy's friend. Ted Murphy is the brilliant mind behind PPP, by the way. 

Everything nowadays is ad-driven. Look at your journalists, your TV personalities, and those good writers of books, they do it for the money but they do it the nice way. Gone were the days of the claustrophobic I-am-writing-for-my-self point-of-view, everyone has sold out and selling out is good because it helps the economy. 

This is a free world, those who want to fill their blogs with what you call "trash" have the right to do it like the way you have all the right to "not put anything paid in your blogs". If those blogs with ads are really that bad, then people will stop visiting them and their Alexa Rank will fall and Google will kill their Page Rank. 

I am proud to have paid posts in my blogs and I am also very proud to supply content to other people's websites (bigger website!. Google likes me, I have a Page Rank of 3, Alexa says that my rank is within the top 100,000 in the world (my Alexa Rank is 97,444.)

This is a free world, let us be civil and stop whining about ads. Ads make the world go round. 

By the way, I earned $257.33 from my blog just this month of January, that is what I get from selling out.

When I visited the blogs of those who "do not monitize" their blogs, I saw that they have failed attempts to monitize their blogs; there are traces of monitization attemptes like badly placed Google Adsense blocks. That woman blogger who said "how stupid do they think people are" even has two Google Adsense blocks in her blog. So it means that she's attempting to earn from her blog but failed to generate enough income that is why she views those who are earning good in a bad light.  The grapes are sour when they are not in your hands.