here’s a simple question I’d like to ask all of us. or do you already have the answer? quite a number of us Malaysian started blogging since early 2000, very few started even before that I believe. today the number of bloggers increases exponentially. so now, why do we blog?
not too long ago, I posted an entry here regarding what we could earn from blogging of which can be summarized;
- Make friends, lots of friends
- Idea sharing, even on tiniest issue
- New discovery
- Recognition
oh, guess what, money is not listed. do you have any idea why?
you see, more and more bloggers are now blogging for money, but they forget things which first was beneficial to bloggers. it was not only money but something which is more valuable.
do you blog for money, or it’s just to complement your blogging activity?
there are few bloggers who even refuse to place any ads in their sites, now why is that so?
People refusing to put ads on the blog…well perhaps it’s simply because they object to the idea of commercializing something that is so personal. Of course there can be many views to this. Some people will think that there’s nothing wrong with making an extra buck…but you will have others that believe that the true spirit of blogging is one that should not be corrupted by capitalism.
You see, for many of such people the reason behind why they blog is to expose stuff and to express, honestly truthfully and explicitly what they believe in. By tying yourself to advertisers you are undoubtedly limiting yourself or inhibitting yourself in one way or another. Or don’t we all know the phrase “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you…”
Still I daresay the majority of the blogging population, including the massess of kids who are doing it to follow the “trend” of keeping on online account of their day-to-day life, will probably talk simply about their shopping sprees, sex, their relationship problems, sex, their parents…oh and did i mention SEX etc. etc. so it really isn’t much of a problem.
Of course there are quite a few who join sites like nuffnang merely to give them a platform to showcase their work to more people. It’s a means of self-advertising I suppose. Granted, they may not get as much advertisors (if any at all) but I suppose if it wasn’t what they were after all along it hardly matters.
Let’s not forget, too, that there nuffnang allows us to limit the adds posted on our blogs to “charity adds” (is the term charity?) or something like that. So one could very well join without capitalistic intention. How realistic is being completely free of captitalism in today’s society is, of course a separate issue…
Personally, I don’t like the term “blogging for money” at all. Except for perhaps a very select few, I believe that almost ALL people are just using it to complement their blogging (or so I hope).
It’s stretching definitions in a way. How does someone who blog just for money (as opposed to complementing their blogging) do it differently from the latter? And if so, are they still called blogs? And then there is the other issue of blogshops. Why is a blogshop a “blog” and not merely a “shop”?
It’s complicated.
Hope this mini-essay answers your question.
PEACE OUT