A Pinoy Blog About Nothing

* With apologies to Dire Straits.

Migs mentioned it awhile back. Paulo also mentioned it in his post about posting ads on the site.

Since the cool kids are doing it and sheep that I am, I’ve included ads on this blog since the beginning of this year. Not for anything really, just curious what kind revenue /traffic /interests /mutants this old blog can pull in (mostly students looking for answers to their assignments, people looking for mp3s and naked pictures of Diana Zubiri and Francine Prieto in case you’re interested). I haven’t changed (at least not consciously) what I post. It’s still mostly what I like and what interests me. Meaning it’s still mostly crap. I haven’t posted anything about asbestos like this guy in pursuit of high-revenue generating keywords.

Now Jason Kottke, uber-blogger, has decided to put his money where his blog is - he’s going full-time on this blogging thing. Full-time as in no day job. Just blog and money from his blog. Like a trapeze artist performing without a net.

But are ads and paid-to-blog schemes good for blogging?

One of Migs’ readers mentioned Boingboing and Gawker Media (in which Sony pays $25,000 a month) as a testament that blogging and ad revenues can mix. I wouldn’t be too hasty to generalize - just because you put up a blog doesn’t mean you can quickly earn revenues by sticking ads on it. Boingboing or even MeFi, hell even Slashdot has established its cachet with the web-savvy netizens. If surfers trust the websites, or at least equate some credibility to them, they are more likely to click on the ads. Most web-savvy surfers have developed filters and have started ignoring banner ads (oh to be in 1997 again!). They seem to trust text links more. Relevant text ads would be have higher likelihood of clickthroughs. It all goes back to content: how useful is it and how timely is it being delivered?

I’ve learned, having worked with huge traffic sites back in the Bubble days, that placing ads willy-nilly won’t help you ‘monetize your eyeballs.’ Most surfers look for something specific in your site. That’s where the search engines and search engine optimization come in. The higher your website/blog is on the search engine results, the greater the chances of that user coming into your site. If they come into your site using a search engine then they already have an idea what to look for. Serving up relevant ads for say ‘asbestos’ obviously now gets a higher chance of getting clicked.

Bumping up search engine ranking is also the cause for comments and trackback spam. So how do you get people to your site legitimately? Three words: content, content, content. Kottke is leveraging his site’s history of meaty content to attract donations from readers as opposed to having advertisements. He said advertisers become a “third party” in the Kottke-reader relationship and that it might sway his content one way or the other.

It’ll be interesting to track Kottke’s progress in his experiment. I already visit his site regularly so that’s not asking for much. Would I contribute to the fund to keep his site going? I don’t know. I like his site but unless he comes up with far more exclusive content, it’s tough to shell out money for something I could get elsewhere for free. But would I do it myself? Take that leap of faith and go blogging full time? Maybe when I have my pr0n-site farm going.

Another issue about ads and getting-paid-to-blog schemes is: is it ethical? I agree with Kottke’s concern about ads influencing his posts. To be able to have no sacred cows in expressing opinions (let’s face it - most blogs are just that to showcase the author’s opinions) you need to have some degree of freedom. Of late there’s a lot of marketing blogs emerging, i.e. blogs with an explicit product agenda ( as opposed to personal weblogs). Some are even disguised as personal blogs like how McDonald’s tried to pass off this blog about a french fry that looked like Abraham Lincoln. So yes, the more web-savvy surfer would have his/her guard up against fake blogs. If you maintain a blog yourself, how often have *you* clicked on a text ad? I would guess not very often or not at all. Because you already know what those links are doing on someone’s site.

But like in the pre- and Bubble days, there was a lot of ‘me too’ coming out of the woodwork - hoping they can make a quick buck off this dot com thing. These days blogs are the new dot coms. There’s very little barrier to entry. Have server space, will blog. “You have a modem, I’ve got an opinion.” But in all this I would say there will be another shakedown. Poseurs would fall by the wayside. They’ll get tired of it and say “what’s with blogging anyway?” Those who are sincere enough, who actually have a unique point of view, understand the medium and love it will endure.

Good luck not just on the financial side, Jason. Hope you keep that integrity as well. That goes for everyone who decided to make money off blogs. Me, I’m off to do some experimenting of my own. Possibly involving a pr0n site farm.