I was just now viewing my StatCounter and fantasizing how each of the 8,100-some-odd page clicks could be converted into dollars. Of course, those are only page clicks and a great many of those would be mine since the Web counter does not differentiate between my clicks and those of others. It does separate visitors into unique visitors and repeat visitors. So if everyone who clicked my page one time had paid me a dollar since I started using the counter in July I would have made about $2,000. That is just idle fantasy though.
Blogging is not something I do for money, yet. I have been toying with ideas on how to make money with a blog. But not with this blog because I don’t know anyone in their right mind who would pay to listen to me ramble about noisy roofers next door or relive my dreams about Susan Candiotti or have posts which involve imaginary dialog between mannequins. The key word there is “in their right mind,” however, and perhaps I could gear something toward those who aren’t in their right mind. The problem is I don’t know how to determine who is in their right mind and who isn’t in their right mind. What is a right mind anyway? What’s wrong with a left mind or a middle mind?
If I was to make money blogging I would have to offer readers something: information about a subject or particularly pointed commentary or directions on how to pour piss out of a boot. Then I suppose the income would come from advertising rather than individual readers because, at least for now, people seem to like free Web content.
But I wouldn’t want just any advertisers. For instance, I wouldn’t want companies that make cattle prods advertising on my blog. I would not allow ads for hemorrhoid medicine or feminine hygiene products, no matter how much I think such merchandise can have a positive place in our society. I would most certainly not allow an advertiser pitching some kind of “cure” for baldness. It’s not so much that if something works for people who don’t want to be bald it is necessarily evil. What I detest is the message many of these advertisers send, which is you are some kind of outcast, less-than-desirable human lump of protoplasm if you are bald. I’ll have you know I’m not some kind of an outcast.
So what’s important about money anyway? Well, for one thing you must have it to eat, to have a roof over your head, to buy hemorrhoid medicine and cures for baldness. Money won’t buy you love, of course. It will buy an occasional substitute. Nonetheless, I guess for the time being I will just blog for blogging’s sake, like art for art’s sake except it isn’t necessarily.
But if you have an overwhelming urge to pay me for blogging — or not to blog for that matter — just shoot me an e-mail and I’ll give you an address where you can send your checks. Money is not a bad thing, you know.