Ads
Everyone got mad about a blog selling links, and the logic was simple: ads are bad, blogs with ads are bad, done. But I don’t think that holds up.
I hate intrusive advertising. Those banners that explode across your screen, the cheap Google ads, the stuff that punishes you into clicking. It’s sloppy. It makes me leave sites. But hating that isn’t the same as saying nobody should earn money from their own website.
The thing nobody wants to talk about is money. Not everyone can afford to run a blog as a hobby. Someone with a shit job, or no job, counting every penny—their internet connection costs money, their domain costs money, their hosting costs money. Why should they choose between keeping their site alive and being broke? The argument always comes back to hosting is cheap now,
which is only true if you have money to spare.
What bothers me is the way advertising got written off as inherently crass, inherently wrong. But it doesn’t have to be. A well-designed banner, something that actually means something to the people reading, something relevant to them—that’s not selling out. That’s just trying to stay online.
I’m thinking about doing it myself. Thoughtful ads for things that might interest whoever comes here. Nothing that’ll make me ashamed. It won’t make me rich. But why should that matter?