Julie R. Neidlinger: Lone Prairie Art Works (via Mowser)

Continuing down the path to sell-outville.

written by Julie R. Neidlinger 6 comments link this post

Areas of selling out:

Social Networking - Check.
AdSense - Almost check. Tip Jar - Probably not far off.

I keep reading about people making some decent money off of AdSense. It always surprises me, since I use Firefox's Adblock Plus with a feverish passion and actually don't see the ads on any sites. I don't realize their prevalence on the web because of that, and so it seems like a program that couldn't generate fifty cents for me. I'm always overwhelmed when I go on another person's computer and realize all of the ads I've gotten used to not seeing. It's hard to concentrate with all of the ads.

I hate ads. I have, for nearly seven years, kept any advertisements (save my own) off of my site. Today I applied for an AdSense account. I feel pretty disgusted with myself. But...even $10 a month would be very nice. Even $5. I would take $5. I certainly don't think I'll make thousands, or even hundreds. That just doesn't seem to be in the cards for me, ever, in whatever I choose to do -- career, art, business -- anything. I'm not terribly bothered by that, but I would like to live a little less close to the edge.

I'm kind of tired of supplementing my income by being a medical experiment.

In my research, I came across Joel Comm's site. Talk about your hard sell... He's got eBooks and Secrets and Templates and, while almost Da Vinci-like, suffers from way too much abuse of yellow text highlighting. He also makes money, off of his AdSense and selling people on his ideas of AdSense.

I don't want to become some kind of huckster, always trying to finagle a few bucks out of people. I don't have a "tip jar", though during the Lone Prairie Pencil Giveaway, I gave people the opportunity to throw me a bone and give me $3. I had one taker. That was nice. I really appreciated it and was as surprised as all get out when it happened. PayPal took a chunk of that glorious $3, though. Jerks.

I give a lot of stuff away for free, both online and in real life. The page that gets the most hits (after this blog which is, of course, enthralling you for free) is the page where I have all the free downloads and project sheets. I like free, and I like making stuff available for free.

But I also would like to have a little money in return, every once in a while. I'm not against money changing hands, as long as it doesn't happen in the temple or something.

A guy at church once asked me, during one of the potluck dinners after service, what kind of volume of sales I did via my web site. Choking on my lemonade, I laughed. "Volume? There's no volume. My sales have never emerged from flat and two dimensional. Ha ha! Volume. That's good. Good one."

AdSense always seemed wrong. Getting money for doing nothing. Allowing more annoying advertisements to fester in the world and pollute my web site. That kind of thing. But then I thought that I give away a lot of free content here, and in further justification of the scourge that is AdSense, I decided it would be like getting money for doing something at long last.

I don't know.

But I'm tired of being a medical experiment and I sort of like living where I do and don't want to move away unless I have to. So...we'll see.

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Labels: blogging, promotion

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6 Comments:

You know, if the Ad Sense ads weren't so standard-looking and, well, but ugly, I might use them too.

By girlfriday, at 16/11/07 16:12

You are a good and kind friend.

:-)

I feel less sell-outish, now.

By Julie R. Neidlinger, at 16/11/07 16:17

I had adsense on my blogs before for months, but after having only $2.92 in earnings during that time, I took them off. I think you have to make $100.00 before they will pay you. I have, however, had a little more luck with my "Buy me a cup of coffee" wordpress plugin. Two whole cups of coffee in a little over two months. Woo Hoo!

By Will, at 16/11/07 21:08

AdSense sounds like a good idea from what I've read. I certainly wouldn't call making money from it or anything else "selling out."

And if that doesn't work you could always try:

1) Lone Prairie bobble heads
2) Action figures (hi-ya!)
3) Key chains
4) Refrigerator magnets
5) Baseball caps

By deniro, at 19/11/07 11:21

I'm looking into elance.com. There's a cost (I think it's $30 a month) but it gets your name out there, gives you a chance to bid on different projects, etc. Maybe that would work for you, too. I'll let you know what I find out if I actually do this.

By dakota lifestyle: beyond the weather, at 21/11/07 10:53

Julie,

It's a tough call. As a fellow freelancer, I can tell you that elance.com isn't all that helpful. You put in a good bid on a job and some old lady looking for a few bucks to feed her cats for the month comes in and bids that job for a tenth of what it should be. Of course, she gets the bid.

I've struggled immensely between thinking I should (1) give up blogging completely because it takes away from my regular freelancing work time AND (2) consider ads. But if I add ads, I wind up owned by the ads. (And AdSense is likely to toss up a "Psychic Hotline" ad on a Christian blog, too. Seen that one several times before.)

So we labor on in penniless obscurity.

I wish I had a helpful answer to this issue, but I'm convinced that the good writers out there who blog but don't have a national name will keep doing what they do for free until too much pressure builds for them quit. You do have to sell your soul. And even then, that may not be enough.

By DLE, at 22/11/07 22:15

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