Wednesday, April 2, 2014

A Postscript on Monetizing


Dear readers, you have left me over three thousand words worth of comments on Monday's post on relationship capital and I am beyond honored.  I have a post scheduled for next week about the audiences I imagine when I draft various types of posts but, in short, you are my ideal audience.  My heart swelled every time I opened an email from Disqus with your thoughts and I had to scroll down on my phone to read the whole comment because you gave the topic so much time and energy.  Thank you.

I will respond to all them them (on the post itself, so we can continue the discussion) as soon as I can, but please do indulge me in this postscript first!  I was focused on writing about how relationships and monetization intersect that I didn't clarify something I should have: I have no problem with the monetization of blogs.

Many of the posts I've published over the past year or so on blogging have dealt with what I've called "hobby" bloggers; I don't know enough about the mechanisms of professional blogs to address them and, as I said on Monday, I have less of an emotional investment in them.  However, it cannot be denied that hobby bloggers are, en masse, generating income from their blogs - and more power to them.  Again, as I said on Monday, very few of us would turn down the opportunity to make money from doing something we love, something we'd be doing for free anyway, and many bloggers are discovering hidden skills that lead them to build their own small businesses.

However, as soon as a blogger makes the conscious decision to monetize, be it from sponsorship, with affiliate ads, or through media networks, she takes steps towards being a professional blogger and makes the concurrent decision to view me not just as a reader but as a consumer.  That doesn't make me any less willing to support her, but it does mean that my pageviews and clicks directly contribute to the financial success of her blog and I think that does give me - and all other readers/consumers - the right to hold her to a higher standard.  If a blogger monetizes in a strategic way, her blog becomes a business; it's therefore disrespectful to her readers/consumers to throw out "it's just a blog and I do it for myself" to explain amateur behavior online when she makes money from our interactions with her. We're all learning and growing in our own ways, everyone makes mistakes, and I love that the blogging community is so encouraging and flexible, but this isn't high school. When a blog generates income from its readers/consumers, the relationships change and the responsibilities are greater.

I occasionally scroll through a well-known lifestyle blog that included a post recently about why she blogs.  It was a bit of a rant, really, against bloggers who blog for money.  She writes for fun, she insisted, and that makes what she does pure; the money she makes is just an "added bonus" that doesn't affect her content.  (Bonnie wrote a great response to that post, if you haven't seen it and want to read it.)  All of this text, however, was next to a dozen sidebar sponsor buttons, a large branded ad, and announcement of her affiliation with BlogHer.

It's great that a blogger can make money from her blog, whether it's enough to reinvest in growing her blog, enough for occasional shopping splurges, or enough to quit her job and devote herself entirely to her blog and her blog-inspired small business.  However, when a blogger begins making money from her blog by design rather than by accident, she becomes responsible to her readers/consumers and can no longer dismiss unprofessional conduct, whatever that may mean, with comments like "it's just a blog and I'm just a blogger."

I love supporting other bloggers, but, honestly, if a blogger makes money from my investment in her blog, I expect more than that.  Based on your comments from Monday, I might be preaching to the choir: I think many of you do, too.

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15 comments:

  1. That's an aspect of monetizing that I hadn't really considered but I agree with you 100%. Once you've monetized, the only times you can say, "I'm just blogging for me" are when you 1) give up monetizing or 2) are Richard Branson and getting ten million page views just because you're Richard Branson. Maybe not the best example, but I love his take on creativity in the business world.

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  2. Betsy your comments on sponsoring are dead on and very insightful. I especially enjoyed your previous post that sparked the whole discussion- the sponsorship line is very hard. I understand a lot of the comments... if you are being paid to promote a post then certainly it doesn't feel genuine. But at the same time I can't expect a bunch of people to promote my posts just out of the goodness of their hearts. To me a lot of it is raising awareness. I pay someone with a large audience to raise awareness of my blog and then it's my job to turn that person into an engaged, active reader. It's all very fascinating and it will be interesting to see how sponsorship changes within the next few years. It is constantly evolving.

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  3. Oh, and thanks for the shout out :)

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  4. I loved that last post (+all the comments) and this one was very fascinating as well!


    Interesting about the example you shared. I think that if you are trying to be taken seriously, then you're right: you've gotta step up to the plate and admit it. You can't pretend you're not when someone calls you out (even if it's scary). You can't say for certain situations that you're just "having fun" and then turn around and want people to treat you as a legit business.


    It's possible to have both: a business that's fun, but I think what you're saying here is that... once you market yourself as a certain thing, the expectations of the audience/consumer are different and telling them that their expectations are wrong is like a slap in the face. I think what you're saying is that because the outcomes are different than if it were a hobby, the blogger's relationship to her audience is going to be different. In essence, as soon as a blogger "goes public" (monetizes), her audience becomes shareholders. And that makes what they think and say a LOT more important on a certain level. Because now they have a stake in it, too.


    So, you're totally right -- there is no longer any "blogging just for me" when that happens. Because now, you're actually blogging for your shareholders and their opinions directly affect the worth of your stock.

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  5. Betsy, the timing of your post is (as usual) impeccable. Recently I have been getting pretty annoyed with a blog that I have been reading for 4 years now (The College Prepster). To be honest I’m feeling a little heartbroken that the blogger has changed so much in ways I view as negative. I recently ventured over to Get Off My Internets to see what people were saying about her, which I felt pretty guilty about. While there was certainly some bashing going on by some people, I was surprised by how much awesome and constructive criticism there was. A lot of it stems from the fact that this girl makes her living entirely from her blog, and lives in NYC- one of the most expensive cities in the world. When she constantly ignores feedback from her readers and continues to post the most ridiculous and immature things, it feels frustrating because I know that every time I click on a link on her site I am contributing to her paycheck. You have definitely hit the nail on the head when you say “if a blogger makes money from my investment in her blog, I expect more.” Basically, I think if a blogger is going to make money, it has become a business. As such, the blog should be treated accordingly- i.e. professionally. I feel like if a blogger doesn’t want to treat her blog professionally, then the monetization should go.

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  6. I think sponsorship can be really helpful when you're trying to grow your blog and reach a new and bigger audience! but, as you say, you're paying someone to help you raise awareness and then it's your job to hook the new readers - you paid to get them to your blog in the first place and keeping them there should be taken seriously, I think, as you clearly do!

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  7. I LOVE YOUR SHAREHOLDER EXPLANATION. yes, that.

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  8. haha I almost used Carly as an example of readers taking it personally when a blogger is unprofessional in Monday's post! I actually learn a lot about how to avoid blogging mistakes from GOMI - many of the commenters were once passionate followers and take to GOMI to air frustrations that the bloggers refuse to address.

    I am 100% in favor of supporting bloggers who monetize and just because a blogger monetizes doesn't mean we stop being friends, but another dimension is added to the relationship and I think the blogger has a responsibility to nurture that as well as the friendship bit, you know?

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  9. haha very true :) as soon as you monetize, you are blogging for yourself, your readers, and your potential advertisers. it can be tricky to keep all three parties happy... unless you're Richard Branson!

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  10. This comment. It holds everything I want to vocalise but wasn't sure how to. Erika wins at commenting.

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  11. Oh, I'm totally with Bonnie on this one. Wish I could go into it further, but my brain is fried (when isn't it?).

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  12. ha! but yes. there is NOTHING wrong with wanting to be financially compensated for all the work you put into your blog and getting paid doesn't make your blogging less authentic as long as you're transparent about what you're doing and why!

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  13. SO true - we see other people blogging for money and, because people are often cagey abut it, we think it's something we can do easily too! but there's SO MUCH that has to go into it from a professional standpoint and, at the end of the day, we each have to decide whether or not the effort is worth it.

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