I want to explain this to you. I didn’t intend to bring it up at all, but it seems that there’s some concerns out there that I should address.
About a week ago I put a “donate” link on my site. I tucked it away on the “contact” page, and I didn’t advertise or promote it. A lot of blogs have these kinds of links, but I rejected the idea for a year before I finally decided to put one up.
But in the last week, I’ve received some messages from loyal readers who feel offended, or used, or manipulated, or something, by this new addition to my blog.
It obviously wasn’t my intention to manipulate anyone, so here’s the deal:
I get sizable traffic on my blog. There are a lot of things I can do to monetize that traffic, but, as it stands, I only have two small ads per page. Yes, I make money from the ads. Yes, I want to make money from this site. I put a lot of time into it and I couldn’t possibly justify the time expense if I wasn’t bringing in an income to help support my family. Coming up very soon I’ll be putting even more time into it, not to mention incurring some pretty hefty expenses as I expand and grow the operation, but I can’t get into that right now.
In any case, I’m faced with the quandary of how to best convert traffic into income. I could put a bunch of additional ads on my page. I could come up with some kind of “premium subscription fee” ploy. I could strike deals with the businesses that reach out asking me to write a little testimonial about their product in exchange for cash. I could start doing mailing lists. I could do a whole host of other things. But I don’t want to riddle my website with tons of ads, I refuse to ever charge for content in any way whatsoever, and I won’t compromise my credibility by doing write-ups for products I don’t actually use or care about.
So, I thought, I’ll just put this “donate” option on here, forgo most of the other “monetization strategies,” and let people contribute a little bit if they want to. If they don’t — cool. I won’t hit anyone over the head with it, but I’ll have the avenue open and off to the side.
That’s the thought process. In my mind, this was a more tasteful and honest strategy than any of the others I could think up. I feel a little strange even laying this out for you, but I want to be honest with you guys. If enough people for some reason feel alienated by the PayPal link, I’ll take it down.
Thanks for reading. This is the last time I’ll bring this up.
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