My wife likes money. She knows that for me blogging serves many purposes, but when she sees my revenues from Amazon with my blog (basically, it buys me a book or two every quarter), she is perplexed. I have never tried to turn my blog into a direct revenue generator because people don't read my blog to buy things.
The same is true for Guy Kawasaki. As Chris Anderson notes today, guy made a blazing $3,350 from his Technorati top 50 blog in 2006.
Chris says:
Just another reminder that the reason to be a Long Tail producer is not direct revenues. Instead, it's exactly what Guy uses it for: marketing for his books, VC firm, speeches and consulting. For which he's exceedingly well paid. Indirect revenues rule!
So, when my wife asks me in Cantonese "Myeh Tsin" (or however you anglicize it) - which basically means "What Money" - this is nearly precisely what I've told her.
Monetizing your blog is like going to a cocktail party and expecting people to pay to talk with you. It's inappropriate and will cause people to avoid you.
Going to a party and meeting people, liking them, extending your network and having opportunities arise is totally appropriate and perhaps the very definition why a cocktail party exists.
My blog is not a Technorati Top 50 blog, but it does have a readership level that keeps me going. More importantly, I have met many people through this blog that I talk to often if not every day.
John mentions the long tail of revenue realization through indirect revenues. One of these is that ideas that I write about extend or become conversations between me and these people I've become acquainted with.
Sometimes it inspires me to action, sometimes it inspires other people to action, sometimes we form an inspired group. Sometimes we forget the whole thing.
I spend much more on my blog than I generate in revenue every year. But I wouldn't trade the friendships I've made and the opportunities that have arisen for orders of magnitude more than my capital costs.
Irrelevant adsense ads are never going to make me wealthy.
Blogged at Gray Hill Harbor Offices in Seattle using Windows Live Writer
There are alternatives that work! Hint... hint...
Myeh Tsin, hehe. True for millions and millions.
Posted by: Jim Kukral | 05 January 2007 at 17:07
First, I of course agree with the sentiment of your posting. I blog to stay in contact with people.
But I have two small comments... is it possible that you don't get any AdSense revenue because you don't have Google Ads on your blog? At least when I looked I couldn't find any - hard to tell with all the stuff that's there.
Which leads me to the second point; is it possible that you get so few clicks on Amazon because most people read your blog via rss since opening your typepad site takes something like 3 minutes on my 7Mb/s link at home? I haven't checked, but with all the stuff in the sidebars and the large number of posts on your home page, it must be easily 10MB to download (and easily more than 100 files with all the images).
I only come to your site if I want to comment, other than that I always use Bloglines...
Food for thought...
Posted by: Dirk | 05 January 2007 at 18:11
Heh
The adsense ads on my blog are intentionally place in a nearly unfindable position. (Right column near the bottom).
I wondered about the loading times, but the blog section comes up almost immediately. What takes a while is loading the little bits from Plazes. When I watch the status bar in Firefox, it says loading from plazes.com for quite some time. Everything zips right up.
So, I haven't really thought about cutting it down.
As for the RSS feeds. Absolutely. There are people that inject adsense ads in their RSS feeds and I hate that.
I'm quite happy that people read the feeds and only come in when moved to comment. I know that's what I do with other people's work. Frequently I'll feel a little alone because there are no comments and then I'll be at a party and someone will want to talk about what I wrote a few weeks back. And that makes it all better. :-)
Posted by: Jim Benson | 05 January 2007 at 18:36
Well - when I quit Firefox and then load the site it spends quite a while on the left sidebar and only after that does the blog show up.
I agree with you on Google Ads in the feed - unless you are a full time blogger and need that to make a living it's a no-no. And even then...
Now let's see if I can find those ads that you mention :-)
Posted by: Dirk | 05 January 2007 at 20:26
Sorry - I looked. No Ads. Can you show me on a screenshot? :-)
Posted by: Dirk | 05 January 2007 at 20:28
I see a Google Ad - it's beneath the MyBlogLog table and above the Technorati search box.
Posted by: Webomatica | 05 January 2007 at 20:37
Remove egg from face...
Oops.
Errr.
I mean...
Turning off ABP in Firefox really helps.
Man I'm glad it's Friday.
I'll go to dinner now and stop embarrassing myself on my computer :-)
Posted by: Dirk | 05 January 2007 at 20:56