There are options to make money with the blog. I dismissed the idea without thinking many times, now Pugnacious priest's post made me collect my ideas.After all, I have 1300 subscribers (don't look at the feedburner icon, it's messed up), 1500+ unique visitors, so I could make some cash. You are most probably surprised that a goblin missed this opportunity. I got offers in mail for placing more targeted (and better paying) ads from "gold guides" and gold farmers.
The fact that I find these useless and stupid, and consider all advertisements simply pollution, should not bother me. Just because it's crap, I can still sell it to idiots, after all, that's part of what I do at the AH.
The main problem with being payed for blogging is that you start to afraid losing visitors/subscribers, since they cost you. Now I don't give a damn if I offend some moron. I delete troll comments like "this blog was good source of goldmaking but now you give us your bullshit about social people, stop it or we leave". Do it and see if I care!
If I'd have anything to lose I'd start to self-censor myself, removing lines that might offend people until my blog turns into some politically correct crap that even I wouldn't read (and therefore would be losing visitors too!).
At first a totally subjective reason: I don't want to destroy my blogging fun forcing myself to reject my own ideas and write something I find useless. (It's anti-goblin, I should be writing what brings me the most money even if its disgusting)
Secondly a more objective reason: My biggest loss in real life is tax (and forced health insurance and forced car insurance and other fees that I must pay or go to jail). The money I could gain from blogging is spare change compared to the money I "donate" to the politicians and welfare leeches of my country. Spreading goblinish ideas is a very selfish move: I convince people not to waste gold and time to M&S in the game.
This move has nothing to do with game-things like shot rotations, boss tactics or purple pixels. When someone rejects an M&S, he rejects another living, breathing, feeling person. Granted, he does not has to look into the M&S's face. He can also be sure that the M&S lose nothing but pixel gold and pixel gear. Yet, even if it's just an easy simulation of rejecting an M&S, it is a little step in a way to the point when the person is capable of standing up front of his friends, co-workers, family or even a political rally and speak up: "I want my hard-earned money to be mine. I don't want to support complete strangers just because they are poor."
If enough people will say that, the world will be a much better place. I hope, that I can contribute to the creating of this better world. Not because I'm nice, simply because I want to live there. So I consider my ad-free blog as an investment that I expect to have returns.
PS: The point of the post is "my blog is free because spreading my views pay off". You can argue with this point, but not with my views here. You'll have many opportunities for that, I promise.
16 comments:
I praise you on your choice. Faced with the prospect of income it can't be easy to say no but this way, you're less censored as you said.
"I want my hard-earned money to be mine. I don't want to support complete strangers just because they are poor."
I take issue with these sentences. Does it imply that you are against support for 3rd world countries or are you argueing that investing in these areas is profitable.
I too don't believe in supporting complete strangers who are lazy. But I think everybody has a right to get a fair chance in life.
Yeah, I get that I just made this "right" up, there really isn't one.
But I nevertheless propose there should be a fair chance for everyone.
Please respond.
There seriously are better ways to make money than to run a WoW blog.
To me this is a pleasure, not a job. And I must admit that I prefer to read add-free blogs. I don't condemn bloggers having ads, as long as it's not gold-selling ads, but it's really up to them. And I do visit and read them, in spite of the ads. But still... there is something in the purely amateur perspective of blogging that I like. WoWInsider is great in may ways, but it doesn't have the heart and soul as a completely volontary, un-payed, ad-free blog has.
Having adds will ALWAYS take a way a tiny little bit of your credibility as a blogger imo. And the question people who accept ads must ask themselves is: is it that tiny income really worth that loss?
The freedom of expressing your opinions in your blog isnt something that easibly traded for money.
And this blog wouldnt be as much fun and useful (combating the internet stupidity is hard if you are afraid to lose the visits of said stupids).
And if you dont have to pay for a domain(and you dont, this is Blogger), you dont need adds.
Be aware that the gold farmers will usually design their system so you get paid for clicks, and the amount you get paid depends on how many of your clicks end up being buyers.
Since the majority of gold sellers' inventories are directly from account fraud, phishing attacks, this means most of the money you get will have been stolen from other players. Not just the morons and slackers who you deride, but also people like your girlfriend, or the people who took you raiding for cash and invited you back for free.
I'm actually not opposed to ads on blogs at all, as long as it isn't for gold sellers and other businesses that are against WoW's terms of service. I don't advocate blogging for money, just because, like Larísa said, there are a lot better ways to earn money, but I think that having the blog be self-supporting is a worthy goal.
And remember, Goblin, people like me read you because we like getting angry at your incredibly misguided worldview. I don't think you lose readers by posting your philosophy. There's a certain pleasure in reading someone who disagrees with you! Though I do admit, I only started reading because you linked to and attacked one of Matticus' posts in what I thought was a very antagonistic manner. If you'd kept that up I'm not sure I would have kept reading. When you've cited my posts or comments, you've been a bit more respectful of what I wrote. I hope that's a trend.
"Does it imply that you are against support for 3rd world countries"
Take a look at this and then think for a moment of the third world countries that have been helped in the past. How many of them are now advanced, independent countries?
If you continue to give people things and not teach them, they will only learn to look for handouts. If you feed a stray, it will keep coming back to get your free food and never learn to hunt for itself.
Many of these countries have been around a lot longer than some other, more prosperous countries. If they have done nothing in thousands of years, when will they? Seems to me, they may not even want 'help'. The US tried to help Afghanistan and Iraq, and now those people say they are angry. Fine. Next time, don't go crying to them.
Live and let be. You can't save people who don't work for their own salvation.
I don't know why I feel you made the right decision, but I feel strongly that you did.
Slight on-topic, I've bought about 3 gold guides (of the 10 or 20 available) and they are all TERRIBLE. Anyone with half a brain would do better just do some reading, try some things, and learn by trial and error.
To anonymous who bought the gold guides: you bought a second one after the first one proved terrible? Why didn't you just buy all 10-20?
In the real world, I pay for a private residence to live in. Aside from the basic need for shelter, a major reason I pay for private space is because I like having one tiny corner of the world in which I have the power to tell other people to screw off.
In other words, I'm willing to PAY for the right to tell people that if they don't like it they can get the hell out (of my space). Here on Blogger, you can get that for free.
Hence, why I'm a fan of blogs, and why I laugh at people who choose to visit someone else's space and then complain that it isn't being run the way they want.
The money I could gain from blogging is spare change compared to the money I "donate" to the politicians and welfare leeches of my country
I assume your aware of where the roads, schools, military security, etc that you enjoy come from?
Gobble gobble.
PS facinating blog. Very different from most.
I'm just glad you haven't sold out, not by getting adverts on here I seem to have a good eye for ignoring them, but selling out in making this PC blog...
as much as i agree and disagree with this blog depending on subject matter, it's still a great read no matter what I think about some posts.
Keep up the good work.
I say take the little bit of free money and use it to your advantage. You are always commenting on taking advantage of M&S in game, well people who can't ignore ads and click on ads are just another type of M&S. As long as you don't lose the easy to read structure, the hell with them. You will still get the visitors
PS: RL is a lot more complicated that WoW, so I seriously doubt that changing people's views about WoW will change their views about real-life issues like tax policy. So I think your goals for your blog are misplaced. You seem to try to boil life down to something as simple as "all poor people are morons and slackers", etc., and life itself just isn't that simple. Sorry.
I'm sure Gevlon's a fan of the phrase 'pull yourself up by your bootstraps', thus doesn't see why money to poor people is a good idea.
Working within his context, money to the poor can be a useful thing for several reasons.
Firstly, and most crassly, it pacifies the population, making them less likely to rebel and form mobs against the rich. If we simply ignored and starved the millions of poor around the country, they could easily decide to revolt because their lot in life was so bad, that a revolution was worth the risk, after all they likely only think in the short term anyhow.
Also at play in real life, is the ability of the rich to influence policy, to help make them richer, a giant positive feedback cycle. Imagine if someone with enough gold could convince Blizzard to change the rules, even the ToS to benefit themselves. Whether perks for themselves, or keeping out potential competition, they'd have Blizzard's ear in the matter. To this end redistribution of wealth keeps the market more balanced and allows innovation. I see a perfectly free market a tending toward stagnation anda standstill as the richest keep getting richer and force out any potential new competition, meaning they never need to adapt or change. (E.g. a rich businessman can temporarily lower his prices to drive out competition who don't have the same capital reserves as himself). Is the coal worker in the company town, spending more than he makes just to feed himself, a desirable scenario? Because I see that as one of the ultimate goblin ideals, getting your labor for more than free, while personally find the notion wrong.
Finally, I'd argue that it's difficult to impossible to figure out how to distinguish poor/starting businessmen from your M&S. If someone poor wants to better themselves, by going to college say, they'll need money to afford the education, to of course make enough money to afford it in the first place. So here comes priavte lending to help, except really this investment is pretty high risk compared to say, giving a rich person a few million to finance their yacht. Thus they'd want to charge significantly higher interest, which makes it that much harder to pay back, and thus even more risky, furthermore it will be a few years before the person even will have an income to begin thinking about repaying it. Thus in such situations, the government is needed to step in, by either offering grants, or guaranteeing student loans. While the person may just drop out because they really are a M&S, we can't know that in advance, and it's certainly worth it to society to help the non M&S poor educate themselves and become useful contributing members. Thus despite potentially helping the unqualified, such spending is beneficial to society as a whole. The saying is of course about the difference between giving a man a fish and teaching him to fish. Though, while he's learning you likely will need to give him a few fish so that he won't starve before he's skilled enough to be catching them on his own.
/walloftext
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