The Old Advertising Merry Go Round

ceb — Tue, 26 Aug 2008 20:54:42 +0000

Every handful of months, I get into a debate with myself, that eventually spills out into my personal advisory board. The debate is always the same: my blog gets lots of visitors, and it’s really decently rated. I could sell a sponsorship that would have value to the sponsor, and that would be beneficial to me (I have this fantasy of a special account for flying to conferences, paid strictly by sponsor ads). Because I’m always only thinking about one single sponsor, classy-like, the way Robert Scoble does it, I figure it won’t be too big a deal.

My advisory board always gives me good counsel. It splits every time on the difference between perceptions (“do I become a number if you start selling me as one?”) and opportunity (“why not? You do great stuff here.”) I’m grateful for all the perspectives, and I take each of them deeply to heart.

And just as I was fairly sure I was going to tip towards the side of trying out a sponsor ad for a few months as a trial, it comes up in conversation elsewhere.

Allen Stern wrote about it here, but gets an earful here on FriendFeed.

Of the comments that drew my attention, Dave Winer said something that resonated with me. Here’s the snip:

“i only click on ads thst interest me and only when i have the time. whcih means that i never click on ads on what you call content. never seen one that interests me and i’m generally not shopping when reading blogs.”

So, there I am. I’ve got a blog that puts out content that has nothing to do with products or services directly, and what it does, the last thing I want is for you to worry that there’s an unseen payoff.

I don’t want dyou to shop while you’re reading and participating here. If I do a project like that, I’ll do it elsewhere. That’s the ruling for now. Okay?

That said, you’re ad-free (except for the RSS ad at the bottom of each post).

What do you think about all that?

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Photo credit, katmere

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The Old Advertising Merry Go Round

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