When I first started blogging, all I wanted was an outlet for me to express myself and to write about my 3 passions in life — my kids, travel and photography.
As time went by, I thought to myself, if I can make some money along the way, why not? After all, a lot of people do the same thing themselves. So some 2 weeks ago, I signed up with several sites that pay bloggers to write posts on specific subjects.
Now I find the whole blogging-for-money thing is making me way too concerned about my stats because better stats = better ranking = better paid blogging opportunities. As a result, I find myself obsessively checking my stats as often as I can. Worse still, I find myself writing about subjects that are beyond the usual scope of my blog but which I know will be picked up by the search engines and will bring in a lot of traffic into my site. But then I got to thinking — even if people do wander into my site due to some controversial post that I write about, if they’re not into the subjects that I normally write about, eventually they probably won’t come back, thereby rendering the entire exercise pointless. [Note: Those posts are still 'Drafts' and I've been fighting the urge to publish them.]
Am I losing sight of my original objective when I started first blogging? Is it worth inserting off-topic stuff like incontinent products and a diet pill that works into my posts in exchange for some monetary gain? Sure, it takes some imagination and creativity to come up with posts relevant to my blog which include the obligatory links. But how will it affect the overall quality of my blog in the long run?
Sheesh… it’s just a blog. So why am I so obsessed about the whole thing?
I absolutely hear you, loud and clear! I feel the same way, sometimes. It bothers you because, most probably, blogging is #4 on your “passions” list, and as a creative person, you just don’t want to be a sellout. I admire people who can straddle the lines. For now, I’ve decided that I’m going to stick to crafts and food. Period. I don’t want to distill the message. That may change in the future, but for now, I’m happy to stick to what I know. :)
i love your blog just the way it is now :)
For six months in 2007, I wrote paid opps as I tried to find a full-time job. Blogging at that time became my full-time job. And the paid opps, I felt, watered down my blog so much that it lost all personality. I hated it, but didn’t want to lose the only financial income I had. Now that I have a job, I’ve renounced paid opps totally. Haven’t written one since Christmas.
Each to his own, in the end. Some people can make it work for them. I really couldn’t find a way to do it without feeling dishonest. :D
i guess i’ll just have to wait and see how it goes.
for now, i just treat my assignments as something like an exercise on creativity. pretend i’m still in english class ;D
At one point, I was religiously logging on to paid ops sites, but ever since Google messed up the page ranks, I couldn’t qualify for most of the ops. I also don’t have my own domain so that also precludes me from most ops. That really put a stop to paid posts…haven’t written one for ages! Heck, haven’t visited those sites for ages too! But I guess as long as your blog is not dominated by paid posts, it’s alright. Your visitors will still come for your “actual” posts.