Day 241: Have I Done the Right Thing?
There are lots and lots of people out there who are using these little scribble-pads we like to call 'blogs' as a career move. Some blog as their only jobs. Some seem to get worn out and burned out with the pressure of maintaining a 'working' blog and the seemingly difficult process of obtaining sponsorship and advertisers and of writing content which pays. Yes, I have this great fantasy that someone will stumble over my blog amongst the, what, couple of hundred, million!, blogs in the world, and think, whoo, we need to pay this one to stay at home and ramble on about her life. But the reality is that the people who make money from blogs work hard to do it. So. Am I willing to do that? On the other side of it, am I willing to let my blog become a piece of advertising? When I started this particular blog at the beginning of the year I did something I hadn't done before and added Adsense widgets to the side and bottom. At first I watched eagerly for hits. And in the end I got really bored because nothing ever happened. Recently someone at work asked me about blogging and I took them on a little tour of my blog and remembered about Adsense, and looked at it. Turned out my account was sitting there waiting for me to give some payment options to it because I had made a grand fourteen dollars somehow. And then a Book Riot post popped up about the Riot Ad Network. I was lured by the notion that they considered the quality of your content before accepting your application to join. And then proud they found my content worthy. I'm excited, I've signed all the paperwork. I've played around with my html (oh, gosh I hope I did that right). But I have a question for you, because many of you that come to visit do work hard to make something more than a diary from your blogs: have I done the right thing?
List_Addict Irene
I think I told you a little while ago, but let me remind you. The mobile/tablet app for Goodreads has free e-books. Free! Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. They seem mostly to be the classics and so—because I didn't already have a Kindle and a 'real' bookshelf full of unread books—I dove in and read James Joyce's The Dubliners. Short stories. Mmmm. They aren't my favourite genre. How about you? In a way they are good for the short-on-time or the short-on-attention, they suit busyness and snatched reading time, but I think, in some ways they have a harder task to captivate you. They have to do so much more in so much less space. So for me a short story needs to be a prose poem. It has to be exceptional. Beautiful. Crafted. And quirky. Call me fussy, but James' short stories don't fit that equation. In this place of the short story I think the contempories have it over the modernists and the classicists. Even though these stories of James' are infinitly more realistic and comprehensible, I'll take epic, complicated, 'riverrun, past Adam and Eve's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs', novel sized Joyce any day in preference. This and two other books finished this week brings my yearly total to a meagre twenty. Eighty to go to get my yearly total goal. Seems unlikely, but not impossible.
Today's is a one designer inspiration—Prada. The only thing I didn't do is walk down the runway with just-out-of-the-shower hair. I know you all think I am a majorly intense fashionista, but this is really the first year that I have even paid any attention to a whole catwalk season launch so I have no idea if it is usual for there to be such a plethora of bad hair. Being a finninicky hair stylist myself I feel I am qualified to talk. Prada has wet hair, Louis Vuitton has bad wigs, and the majority of other designers have parted hair down the middle and combed it down, or bunged it back in a ponytail. Yay. Now I don't have to bother getting curlers and straighteners and everything in between. But clothes? Prada inspired me with looks like this, this and this. But if they were to gift me one outfit, then I would choose this, with this bag, and I would at least pull my hair into a ponytail.
The Outfit
Cardigan: Op-shopped
Dress: Op-shopped
Belt: Op-shopped
Shoes: Irregular Choice 'Love Bug'
Photographer de Jour: Moi
Who wore it better?
Linky today with:
I think I told you a little while ago, but let me remind you. The mobile/tablet app for Goodreads has free e-books. Free! Hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of them. They seem mostly to be the classics and so—because I didn't already have a Kindle and a 'real' bookshelf full of unread books—I dove in and read James Joyce's The Dubliners. Short stories. Mmmm. They aren't my favourite genre. How about you? In a way they are good for the short-on-time or the short-on-attention, they suit busyness and snatched reading time, but I think, in some ways they have a harder task to captivate you. They have to do so much more in so much less space. So for me a short story needs to be a prose poem. It has to be exceptional. Beautiful. Crafted. And quirky. Call me fussy, but James' short stories don't fit that equation. In this place of the short story I think the contempories have it over the modernists and the classicists. Even though these stories of James' are infinitly more realistic and comprehensible, I'll take epic, complicated, 'riverrun, past Adam and Eve's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay, brings us by a commodius vicus of recirculation back to Howth Castle and Environs', novel sized Joyce any day in preference. This and two other books finished this week brings my yearly total to a meagre twenty. Eighty to go to get my yearly total goal. Seems unlikely, but not impossible.
Today's is a one designer inspiration—Prada. The only thing I didn't do is walk down the runway with just-out-of-the-shower hair. I know you all think I am a majorly intense fashionista, but this is really the first year that I have even paid any attention to a whole catwalk season launch so I have no idea if it is usual for there to be such a plethora of bad hair. Being a finninicky hair stylist myself I feel I am qualified to talk. Prada has wet hair, Louis Vuitton has bad wigs, and the majority of other designers have parted hair down the middle and combed it down, or bunged it back in a ponytail. Yay. Now I don't have to bother getting curlers and straighteners and everything in between. But clothes? Prada inspired me with looks like this, this and this. But if they were to gift me one outfit, then I would choose this, with this bag, and I would at least pull my hair into a ponytail.
Who wore it better?
Linky today with:
Advertising? I can't even see it on my netbook screen. I wonder what else I'm missing.
ReplyDeleteEach blog post is like a short story, maybe a super-short story. I used to really enjoy short stories because they're a little intense and unresolved, but now I usually want more of the story, more escape, more vicarious living. I'm a glutton for escapism, I guess.
And you've done the right thing with your outfit. I love the stripes and the layers and the green belt and shoes!
Dean Dwyer, over at www.deandwyer.com, recently interviewed Sean Croxton, a huge Paleo blogger and podcaster etc, who said amoungst other things, that you have the right to earn money doing what you love. So if you are worried you have done the wrong thing by getting into advertising, I would say no, you haven't. If instead you are worried you've done the wrong deal with the wrong crowd, well there must be some sort of get out clause in the paper work?
ReplyDelete