Pet Peeve #16/Discussion
No, this isn’t a pet peeve about discussion. I’m opening the floor to what may or may not be a pet peeve for you.
In the post Making an Honest Blogger’s Dollar, Richard from Just Poker Talk and I got into an interesting discussion.
The main subject is that of blogging for money.
While I believe that sometimes you just have to do what’s necessary to pay the rent, I also agree with Richard’s comment:
“Part of me thinks that the old way is better, that writers who are published through traditional means are more respectable.”
I believe traditionally published authors (submission processes, etc are part of the publishing process) have a more respectable position in the writing world than the average blogger who signed up with one of the many advertising sites. Younger writers and bloggers may cry no fair on that one, but no one should be an instant hit. You have to work at honing your craft, which might not be such a necessary thing to put on your resume when posting reviews and advertisements for these companies.
I mean no insult to writers who do this, but as I said in the comments of the Making an Honest Blogger’s Dollar post, I have no doubt that with some companies, a lower quality writer with higher traffic (though ideally that shouldn’t happen) would be chosen over a higher quality writer with lower traffic.
What happens, though, is both low and high quality writers are hired so there’s little to have as far as respectability goes with this sort of writing.
I recently read a post called Should I Blog for Money? over at ProBlogger which I found interesting. There are a lot of pitfalls when it comes to blog advertising - including ruining your reputation - but would you take the chance? Or do you hold to the ideal of being traditionally published?
Where do you draw the line? Is working for PayPerPost or the like wrong while working for an advertising company offline acceptable? Is it the same thing or different?
Does it come down to a matter of necessity or a matter of honor?
Let me know what you think. Where do you draw the line with your writing? Do bloggers advertising hold a place on your writing related pet peeve list?
March 27th, 2007 at 10:58 am
If I was ever to blog for money, meaning work advertisers products into my posts, I would start a new blog for that. Otherwise, I would feel like it was dishonest to just pretend like I had a sudden desire to plug stuff in my posts. One blogger who I would totally not begrudge doing that exact thing is The Homeless Guy. If it could bring money in to get him off the streets I think it would be worth any loss of reputation. As for me I won’t be doing it because I want to focus on my fiction writing and not add any projects beyond that to my plate.
March 27th, 2007 at 2:40 pm
While I’d rather not see PPPs and other ads in my feed reader, it’s easy enough to skip over them — and remove entirely the blogs that become nothing but ads.
(btw, I agree about higher traffic versus higher skilled writers, but are they mutually exclusive?)
I have a Powell’s affiliate only, and I plan to use the proceeds from it to buy contest prizes. In other words, I don’t blog for the money. I’m lucky enough that I don’t need the income and frankly, like Sara, I’d rather devote my time to my true love: fiction.
March 27th, 2007 at 6:59 pm
Sara - Starting a new blog would be the ideal thing, but if you knew your traffic (and thus your earnings) would suffer because of it, would you still do it.
Susan - True, it is easy to skip over them, but does it paint the entire blog a certain color in your mind, whether you realize it right away or not.
I think most or all of us can agree we’d rather be writing our fiction than anything else. What I want to know is where the line is. Are a few adsense ads down the side of your blog that bad? Would you rather see that on a blog than check in only to see the blogger is talking about a site or product in a post?
Is getting paid to blog a matter of ethics?
March 27th, 2007 at 7:47 pm
I honestly love the topic I’m talking about. I have a great paying 9-5 job, so I don’t blog for the money. I blog because I love having a place where I can discuss things that interest me and anything upcoming my readers should know about.
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Now concerning what you said about low quality bloggers, I guess at first I would have fallen under that category because, quite frankly, I never did any professional writing at all. I wrote songs and I wrote for a personal blog, but I never wrote for any publication at all. But my company took a chance on me, saw that I deserved a chance, and thankfully, everything worked out great.
March 27th, 2007 at 7:58 pm
Here is an interesting article in defense of PayPerPost from Slashdot.
http://slashdot.org/articles/07/03/27/2153205.shtml
March 27th, 2007 at 8:17 pm
I think we’d all rather be writing fiction and having our talents recognised enough that we could get published by the traditional methods. But with the amount of aspiring J.K. Rowlings out there, that is never going to happen and only the select few will get through to the public domain. The rest of us have to find other means to get our writing out there and I think blogging is a great way of doing this. I don’t see any problem with getting paid for it as it’s a nice reward to go alongside the satisfaction you feel from writing about a subject you love and getting feedback on it.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Wow, great post Jaime! In general, the whole writing world is changing. Less books are being published, bookstores are losing sales, traditional authors are having a hard time placing books. Blogs are “instant publishing” and give people a chance to get their ideas out into the world without having to wait for publication in a book or magazine. As for it being inferior, I do know that some editors won’t touch stories and articles that have already appeared online, because they consider that already being published.
I have ads on my personal blogs, but they are there as a supplement to the content of my page…more information for the reader. I make very little money from those. I also am an affiliate with Amazon, etc. and will recommend books, but they are books that I myself have read and recommend.
To me, a blog is just like way back when I published print newsletters. You gotta pay for them somehow…either with ads or subscribers.
bobbi c.
March 27th, 2007 at 9:18 pm
It’s really no different than telemarketing, right? When it comes down to it, selling products is selling products. I write a LOT of low-quality stuff (for advertising purposed, I’m sure, though I never get told where it actually goes!) every single day, not because I’m a low-quality writer, but because I’m specifically told “Write as many articles as you can in an hour about X subject using X word X amount of times. We don’t care about quality.”
Obviously, I do what I have to do to pay the bills. Sure, I could get a different job and be “morally cleansed” so to speak, but then I wouldn’t have the time or resources to pursue my creative writing, the high-quality writing you talk about.
It’s not cool to pretend you’re trying to write a real post, but then only sell the product. At the same time, people are interested in certain products, so I would not feel bad about taking an advertiser’s money and putting a sales pitch on my blog if it was something I thought my readers would like.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:04 pm
Well, I gotta join in since I write under the same blogging overlords as you JM… Blogs and the “making your bones” perspective of working your way up through the publishing process are two completely different things. The traditional that only allows a certain amount of people to have their ideas out there and their words read. It was determined not by the value of the content alone, but by editors with all their human prejudices. With blogs, it is more in the hands of the readers if they want to read a particular person’s thoughts on a subject, not editors. Whether this is a good thing or a bad thing is yet to be determined, but I’m loving having a platform to talk about my hobby.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I’m taking a Russian Literature class this semester, and some of the writers that I’ve read are writer’s who wrote during the Communist era. These are writer’s like Shklovsky, Babel, and Bulgakov.
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This was a very dangerous time for writers because they had to write pro-communist work, or they’d get censored or worse, killed. A lot of them faced the difficulty of writing what they wanted and surviving, making a living.
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The paradox is that the published writer survived but they were not the best writers, they were just people who wrote what the Communists wanted. And the unpublished writer’s, the unheard voices, more often than not turned out to be the more talented ones.
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Shklovsky had a hard time with this. He went back and forth debating what he should do, write for the communists or not. And then there’s Bulgakov who wrote stuff, but never got much of it published since all of it was very much anti-communist. Master and Margarita is his last novel, and he was determined to finish writing that novel, even though he knew that he would never get it published. He wrote a lot of it when he was dying of liver cancer, and it only got published after the communist era began to wane because his wife kept the story and made the manuscript publishable (editing, revising). The sad thing is that Bulgakov was died before the piece got published.
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In America, we don’t have all that censorship to prevent us from writing what we want. We don’t have to live in fear of getting assassinated every living moment of our lives. The point is we shouldn’t take for granted our freedom of speech. That’s not condemnation of paid blogging, mostly what I’m trying to say is to keep that in mind. Enjoy our freedom.
March 27th, 2007 at 11:56 pm
In response to Paul, I agree with your comments about traditional publishing versus the I guess the new era of publishing, which I doesn’t apply to just writing, it’s becoming more and more wide spread this trend toward the average person being able to be make themselves known without having to work as hard for it, though they still do, but it’s so much easier to do.
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For example we have tons of reality televisions shows, which are still pretty popular. This let’s people be television stars without knowing how to act. Not to mention these shows sometimes offer the winner a chance to be something, like a singer. Granted not all are successful even if they win.
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Another example can be YouTube, with users uploading videos of themselves, which is sometimes great sometimes not, but it allows people to express themselves. It’s difficult to draw the line between the world becoming more narcissistic versus more connected. I’m not sure which it is. It’s not a simple answer, but at times it seems a bit narcissistic. Like when facebook and myspace users start posting pictures of themselves drunk and wasted, it gets kind of narcisstic, but I like the idea of bands promoting themselves through myspace. I have no problem with that.
March 28th, 2007 at 3:15 am
BB - Same here. I love blogging about this topic. The money is a definite perk rather than a reason to write.
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Richard - Thank you for the link. There seems to be a definite mix of opinions, but I wonder how opinions vary in relation to income. I found a woman who is an “online opportunity” fanatic, but she’s doing online things to pay the bills. Of course our background influences our opinions, but is money background the biggest influence, do you think?
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DavePee - I agree. A lot of writers just want to get their writing out there and be heard - myself included. If we all waited for our breakthrough hit to put our name out there, most of us would never be heard of, and the few of us who got there would likely be a good number of years down the road from where we are now.
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Allison - True on the posting if you know for sure your readers would be interested. I’m wondering if it would be nice or even smart to put a disclaimer on your blog saying you might be advertising every now and then in posts. I saw one wordpress blogger who had a tab for a disclaimer (about advertising), but is that enough? Or is it even needed?
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Paul - That is the lovely thing about blogging, isn’t it? The readers are the judges, and the readers are more widespread than a select group of judges. We work for a company, so there are ads on our blogs. Does working for a company like 451 differ from working for payperpost, do you think? In technical ways, yes, but how about having adsense on a personal blog vs our company blogs? At the end of everything, is it all just how you make your money and that’s okay?
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Richard - I understand about getting “into the groove” when writing for your blog. As a novelist, this type of short shots going wasn’t at all what I was used to. So, by what you said, could all blogging be considered a celebration of rights (depending on where you’re from)? Does blogging for money take away from that?
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It is a fine line. We’re becoming more connected in what we show and say to each other, but we do it from a computer, with no human contact with people. I know Dane Cook, a comedian, does (or at least used to) go through all his myspace comments, so it’s a way to connect, even on a tiny level, with people you never would before, but at what cost? What I’m wondering from you is whether you think it more a wave of narcissism - people getting used to their new abilities - or if you think all of this is here to stay/only going to grow bigger? What do you think this means for the writer who wants to stay “traditional”?
March 28th, 2007 at 10:56 am
Writer are writers. I’ve read crappy books and I’ve read crappy blogs. The fact that it cost less to blog has allowed more writers to show their work to the world. The fact that there will always be a limit to the number of books produced, due to cost prohibitions, we will have those that declare being in print (or traditional media) is an indicator of elite status.
Getting paid to blog isn’t a bad thing. The goal is to balance making an income with, prostituting yourself out for any buck and killing you credibility. A good example is online webcomic Penny-arcade. As a gamer comic they were very selective (and defensive) about who could advertise on thier site for exactly that reason. To maintain a level of authenticity with thier readers, they had to appear to be above reproach and not accept anything that came their way.
There will always be the purist who declares that bloggers should blog for the love of it and not money, but the reality is that there are alot of people that love what they do, but wouldn’t do it for you for free. People need to feed kids, pay rent, buy stuff.
And yes, I like writing my fiction as well
March 28th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
Thank you for that, Keith! I couldn’t have said it better myself.
March 29th, 2007 at 2:16 am
Sorry I’m very tired so hopefully this is somewhat coherent.
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Not exactly a celebration of rights. More like, in America we can write almost whatever we want. During the communist era in Russia successful writers had to write communist propaganda. The connection I see is pointed at writers who write stuff they don’t care about(which is like propaganda) on their own freewill just to make money.
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At the same time I see a difference between writing creatively versus journalism. With the latter, it’s a job like any other. So if your job is to write car reviews than that’s what you do. Nothing against that. But for me as more of a creative writer, I’d have trouble taking that kind of job. Not because of the money, but because that’s not the kind of writing I want to do or even enjoy very much.
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I agree that there are drawbacks to the type of connection that is opened up with the internet. A lot of times I want to give up on the internet for good, but no luck as of yet.
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In terms of narcissism getting worse, I’m not sure. I have a feeling that it will, sadly. I cringe every time I post a comment on a blog or forum. Obviously the paradox of that is by not participating in online communication type things that is probably even worse because this doesn’t help connect people either. Or something. Not sure what I’m trying to say really. Mostly half-baked thoughts.
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I’m not a big fan of traditional publishing either. Mostly I wish I could write for the drawer, but I can’t.
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In short there’s nothing wrong with blogging for money. People need to eat, so I have nothing against that.
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I guess for me I’d rather get a non-writing related job and write on the side. Basically I want to write when I want and what I want. The deadlines are a killer because I have to get something out no matter what, even if it’s terrible, and the sad part is that it doesn’t matter all that much if it’s good or not. This is more of a case of quantity versus quality in terms of blogging. Quality does help too. I guess, I feel unqualified. I’m trying hard but none of the writing is what I’d ever be proud of. Maybe that’s my problem. I feel like I’m writing crap, which seems to be getting worse and worse as the days go on.
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March 29th, 2007 at 4:25 am
Yes, I can see the parallels you are talking about. Strange, and perhaps fitting in some ways, the two things can be so similar.
It can be depressing when you have something you’re truly proud of which gets a certain level of attention, and then you write something you don’t care about or don’t like and it gets the same amount or greater amount of attention. The truly genius writer is the one who can figure out why readers act the way they do.
I think you should keep in mind that you are your harshest critic. Often what we hate the most is what others like the best. (I’ve experienced this several times.)
March 29th, 2007 at 4:01 pm
I definitely want people to like my writing but the more important thing is that I enjoy writing and reading my own writing. If I’m not proud of my own writing and continue to write just to please others, then I think something’s wrong.
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Again all of this depends on how one views writing. I don’t view writing as a job, which would entail writing for an audience, such as newspaper writing.
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I guess I have a very high and lofty view of writing as something really amazing and that I can’t describe really how I feel about writing. Writing for a newspaper would ruin that for me. Hell, even writing essays for school is a drag because I can’t get myself to BS it and have to write the best I can.
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In terms of a genius writer, understanding why readers act the way they do and capitalizing on that knowledge, that is one of the things I struggle with also. It breaks the illusion that writing is good because it is good. Instead what it reveals, at least to me, is that people are more like robots than anything. Formula writing and movies and advertising is effective for the majority for a reason.
March 29th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
You do have a point, but can you be 100% satisfied with your work 100% of the time? Even if you are simply writing for yourself.
In the end, I think formula writing comes because people are largely unwilling to be pushed out of their comfort zone. If they are, there are even specific ways to do that as well. You have “breakthrough” hits, but then they are done over and over until the next breakthrough comes because “okay, they responded to this well, so let’s keep going with it and make some money before we take another chance.”
March 30th, 2007 at 10:31 am
[...] JM, from Fiction Scribe, had Thoughts on Paid Blogging hit the front page, which is a great topic and one I talk about pretty often. [...]
March 30th, 2007 at 7:08 pm
The funniest thing is that I had opened this article in a tab to read, blogged my own post on a similar topic, then read your post.
What is the difference between a paid blogger and a newspaper or magazine writer? Not one single thing. There are the high and mighty who will cling to the printed page with a death grip, but the reality is that traditional print media are fast disappearing. And even before their eventual demise, when is the last time you read a newspaper or magazine (with the exception of Consumer Reports) that doesn’t have ads alongside? There is no difference whatsoever, and no need to play starving artist to protect “artistic integrity.”
March 30th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
The difference with blogging now, is that the standards are not as high, in terms of editing, content, and selectivity of writers. The reason is that anyone can start a blog and sign up for Google adsense or whatever advertising things you want to sign up for. Also with blogging, there are ways to advantage of search engines, which don’t judge by quality of content and writing.
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Also not all internet writing is blogging. There are a lot of freelance sites that let you submit content for people to purchase and use for their site. Associated Press is one of those sites that offers this.
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Again the problem here is that the market is much larger and therefore the quality of writing is more diluted.
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Also with the point about “artistic integrity”, it doesn’t apply to just blogging. It applies to newspaper writing and magazine writing. It applies in that none of those writing venues is really about creativity. It’s a different kind of writing. Certainly different than writing fiction or poetry and creative non-fiction essays.
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I guess my point is that it’s not really about “artistic integrity”, this clash between creative writing and journalistic forms. It depends on how the author feels about those two types kind of writing and how they coexist.
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I view journalistic writing as different from creative writing. I enjoy creative writing. I have nothing against journalistic writing, but I don’t enjoy writing it. It’s not about artistic integrity at all or selling out. You can’t really sell out when journalistic writing has no “artistic integrity” to it.
March 30th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Scratch that about Associated Press. Wrong site. I read about this site somewhere. There are few, but I can’t remember the names.
March 31st, 2007 at 2:13 am
Cyndy - Welcome to the site! So would you say a 13 year old with a flair for writing website reviews working for a payperpost site is no different from another writer of a different age reviewing websites for a newspaper?
Richard - I also view journalist writing as different from creative writing. I think many other people do, too. However, I have read quite a few articles in my local paper that I could have gone through with a red pen. I’ve seen a lot more blogs with poor writing than articles, but are articles that much more elite these days?
March 31st, 2007 at 4:39 am
Good point JM. I’m not sure if they are more much more elite. It’s hard to tell because there are different levels of magazine quality, as it is possible for someone to put out their own magazine with some funding. How long it’ll last depends how it catches on, and not always on quality. Now with online media, the cost is much less than doing print, which allows more entrepreneurs or whoever to give it a shot with less risk. This is what leads to lower quality just on the basis that there are so many blogs out there. Of course that doesn’t mean that some blogs don’t have writing that is high quality stuff.
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Articles will still go through an editing process, while most blogs bypass that stage and some times there will be errors.
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Again, it comes down to shear number of blogs, the ease in which they can be created, and the lack of an enforced editorial and proofreading stage. Also there is the issue of copyright infringement in blogs, that is harder to enforce than in magazine or newspaper. It’s just much more prevalent.
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Blogging will never be considered elite writing because overall blogging is covers many different styles of writing. It’s not just journalism. Some people post poetry on them. Some use it as a public diary. Also people can blog for free. All these things are equated with blogging, and that’s one of the reasons why it’s not viewed in the same way as magazine or newspaper writing. The image of paid/professional blogging would be strong if certain stigmas were removed, if the types of blogging were better differentiated. At the same time there is still the problem that paid bloggers are less risk than hiring a magazine writer. The less risk means that employers can afford to take on less credentialed writers, which is both a good and bad thing.
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At the same time, all this discussion has made me wonder what makes good writing, or if it even matters in the world of journalistic blogging. Content is more important than the actual writing, so long as it is understandable and reasonably free of spelling errors. The big reason is that blogs are free for readers to consume. Buying a magazine or going to the library to find get one is much less convenient, and probably not worth the higher quality of writing, which is noticeable, but not many people read for good writing. Also with the internet, specialty blogs are capable of attracting a larger audience and can target niche interests better than a magazine.
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I’m not really sure what I’m saying. A lot of this is half-baked. I’m thankful that you brought this topic up. I’ve enjoyed thinking about it because it’s something that has bothered me ever since I started blogging.
March 31st, 2007 at 6:34 am
I see where you’re coming from. It’s certainly interesting to be a writer growing up with all these changes to the face of writing along with many other things happening.
Thank you for participating in this discussion like you have. Much appreciated and enlightening.
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:20 am
I tend to ignore side-bar ads, as I do when reading magazines or newspapers.
Shilling posts on a blog turn me off, perhaps because they blur the line between op-ed and “paid advertisement”.
April 3rd, 2007 at 10:16 am
I don’t mind adsense ads at all. That’s no big deal to me.
I only don’t like when blogs try to sneak in ads by writing about things just to promote that product and not mentioning that is what they are doing.
April 3rd, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Bernita - Our eyes tend to gloss over the ads these days, don’t they?
I could be turned off, but it depends on whether the blogger actually takes the time to write about something he or she things his or her readers would truly be interested in.
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Sara - Oh, that does bug me quite a bit! I want ads to be obvious ads. Sometimes I’ll read them, sometimes I won’t, but I don’t want to start reading something and have it suddenly turns into a promotion.
April 6th, 2007 at 3:04 am
JM, what do you think of advertising other blogs?
I always feel awkward when I mention another blog because it always feels like I’m advertising them or something, which is impossible to avoid if I mention said blog, but at the same time the main reason is to highlight a post that I found worthy to talk about and want to give the author credit.
Like one thing I try to avoid is inserting compliments about the blog and its author, and try to focus just on the post and the reasons why I want to talk about it, because if I also do the latter, I’m worried people will wonder what my real intentions are, when it’s simply to discuss said blog post, and the promotion of said blog is only a side effect.
April 6th, 2007 at 6:37 pm
As far as this site goes, I don’t mind at all. If it’s something I’m reviewing, I try to remain impersonal as possible and list both the negatives and the positives. If it’s a site I genuinely like, I’m biased towards it anyway, so why not say what I want?
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I don’t worry about what other people think when I advertise a site I like. If I like it, I think it’s a given I’ll write things that make it look good. I’ll never lie about a site, but I won’t hold myself back when I enjoy it. I’ll let people know if it’s a friend’s site, a site I came across, or something else so people will know what things might be influencing my judgment.
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As long as I make it clear where I’m coming from (the stance of a friend, a passer-by, or something else) I don’t think there should be or is any problem.