I tend to go, every few years, in and out of phases of doing this blog as a semi-commercial adventure and being more “professional” and “news-like” with it, to phases of treating it like most any other random site on the internet. This comes from occasional shifts in what I feel like doing at a given time, and as a reflection of this the monetary compensation aspect of this site has been an issue in constant flux.
For the past 6 years or more I’ve ran ads regularly. At previous times I had the site ad-free but, even during this, I’ve accepted donations and direct financial support – web hosting doesn’t pay for itself and while I’m sure I have the skills to properly self-administer a web host, I prefer to let the experts at Hostgator manage the complexities of such so I can focus on core content here. Of course, not much of that has been going on — I’ve been heavily focused on other projects like Wolf River Telephone, but I’ve not abandoned Xadara. It’s just very much been on the back burner.
Regardless, Google ads have run on this site for over half a decade and, amazingly, have netted me some income — nothing much, I certainly pay for this site out of my hard earned day job money, but I do it because I do love blogging in this capacity and after 15 years I’d be doing myself a disservice if I just gave it all up now.
Of course, a more relaxed attitude to this place is now the order of the day — I’m not trying to cover breaking tech news or provide commentary on every trending topic under the sun. Those days are over — I truly just don’t give a fuck to continue that rat race. Instead I’d rather go back to how this place was early on and just enjoy covering whatever the hell I want, when I want, as I have in spurts the past few months.
What does all this have to do with advertising, you may ask? Well, it’s pretty obvious — if I’m no longer going to do this as a part of the conventional “tech news blogger” sphere, why bother directly monetizing the content? What do I have to gain, honestly, other than literally pennies a day, for disrupting the experience of those who come to my site?
This is the only spot online I monetize, as well (ever since YouTube gave the ax to growing creators being able to monetize anything) and it truly has added nothing in the end. I made some money, sure, but that went right back into other things. It was too little over too long a time to matter, and I just can’t be bothered with it anymore.
Especially when the oh so sacred entity that is Google can’t even place ads correctly. I didn’t mention that, did I? Yeah, over the past few months they haven’t even been showing where I wanted them to, instead leaving gaping holes in the site that annoyed me.
That’s not to ignore the fact that the ads were all absolutely idiotic — spammy “DOWNLOAD NOW” links that made my site look like some shifty backwater hell where you’ll get is 100 different kinds of malware the second you click a link. I didn’t like what it was doing to the overall user experience so I decided “fuck it” and did away with them.
So what now? IT isn’t like the site is bankrupting me, but I would like to continue to get some minor financial support to help out with things — maybe break even each year, which wouldn’t be much. I’m certain I’ll continue to accept direct donations (I need to re-add the PayPal link and set up some other services, like Ko-Fi and the like so people can chip in where they feel the need and, more importantly, I need to revamp the Patreon to include perks that make sense. I’ll figure it out, I’ve just been extremely lazy with that over the past… 8 years or more? Damn, it’s been a while…
In any case, I expect the site to be a better experience for everyone who wishes to visit (so long as they don’t, you know, hate what I have to say about something, to which I say “hey, you’re the one who clicked the link” — focusing on content and moving forward is the real key. Everything else will fall in line as it may when it may.
Right, I realize this has been one heck of a ramble. It is what it is — I like to type off-the-cuff and very stream-of-thought about such topics. It’s easier to get something written that way.