With the push of a button on Blogger's "dashboard," I can monetize this blog. Google owns Blogger, the company that hosts us here. I pay nothing for Blogger's hosting. Nor do they pay me. Monetizing means I permit Google's gargantuan advertising program, Adsense, to post ads on my blog. If I signed up with Adsense, I'd be given some small cut of the proceeds from Adsense selling space to advertisers. Your clicks on the ads ("click-through") would help decide how much the advertisers paid. For a blog like this it would be a very tiny sum.
A great number of pittances can add up: it's estimated that Google earned about $9.7 billion from Adsense in 2011.
I've decided not to rent your eyeballs to Google. Given the hoopla over Google's recent privacy policy changes being forced on us, I'm a little surprised and kind of grateful that I have the ability to keep those advertisements off my blog. Frankly if Blogger required ads on its blogs, I would have signed up anyway - shhh, don't tell them!
I'm not monetzing because I don't want to have a commercial transaction with you, here. For most of my adult life, I wrote for pay, to spec, for those who employed me. I'm grateful to have earned a living this way, most writers don't get a salary and fringe benefits. But I can't say strongly enough how wonderful it feels to write for you without thinking about the financial consequences of saying something controversial. Or even boring. I edit intensively, if anything I'm pickier than ever: I want to present high quality writing. But the content of High Tide in the Salt Marsh is not tied to the length of my grocery list.
Once of my schemes for surviving life on Social Security is to get paid for writing other things. So I hope you won't mind me promoting my new book once in a while, The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Winning Foundation Grants. Emerson & Church will bring it out in March, and you'll be able to buy it from the usual sources. Having just read every word again in the galleys, I'm very pleased to have this book representing my ideas.
Tomorrow I'll publish an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming book to whet your whistle, then we'll return to your regularly scheduled blog.
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| Gray Foot: Our Dog From the Old Days |
I've decided not to rent your eyeballs to Google. Given the hoopla over Google's recent privacy policy changes being forced on us, I'm a little surprised and kind of grateful that I have the ability to keep those advertisements off my blog. Frankly if Blogger required ads on its blogs, I would have signed up anyway - shhh, don't tell them!
I'm not monetzing because I don't want to have a commercial transaction with you, here. For most of my adult life, I wrote for pay, to spec, for those who employed me. I'm grateful to have earned a living this way, most writers don't get a salary and fringe benefits. But I can't say strongly enough how wonderful it feels to write for you without thinking about the financial consequences of saying something controversial. Or even boring. I edit intensively, if anything I'm pickier than ever: I want to present high quality writing. But the content of High Tide in the Salt Marsh is not tied to the length of my grocery list.
Once of my schemes for surviving life on Social Security is to get paid for writing other things. So I hope you won't mind me promoting my new book once in a while, The Ultimate Insider's Guide to Winning Foundation Grants. Emerson & Church will bring it out in March, and you'll be able to buy it from the usual sources. Having just read every word again in the galleys, I'm very pleased to have this book representing my ideas.
Tomorrow I'll publish an exclusive excerpt from the forthcoming book to whet your whistle, then we'll return to your regularly scheduled blog.
