Two Cents
by Nick on Mar.28, 2009, under Musings
I was talking on IRC with a friend a few weeks back when he asked me to remind him of the URL to this blog, as he was having fun looking up the Google PageRanks for various websites. Considering the length of time since I last checked (as I don’t really care), I checked myself and was surprised to find that I’ve managed to reach a 4 (yes, I double-checked that). In the past, this blog has typically hovered between 2 and 3, so this was unexpected for both of us.
I have no idea how this happened...
Immediately after this magic number was revealed, the topic quickly turned from PageRanks into how I could be making money from my blogging thanks to said PageRank.
<Number_5> dude you could be making 7500-12000 a month
<Limp_Trizkit> who, me?
<Number_5> yeah you…
<Number_5> with the right SEO and good keywords
<Number_5> you could make a great full time income
<Limp_Trizkit> lol
<Number_5> you laugh i’m not joking
I have plenty of respect for the people who can successfully make a living off of their blogging, but blogging has never been something I’ve been able to see myself doing for money, even if it came from advertisements or endorsements. I write because I enjoy writing, and while some money would be awesome (*cough* college student *cough*) to keep things running (like the server), I would feel rotten trying to make money off of something I tend to put onto the back burner quite frequently. (Yes, I’m thinking of the entire lifespan of this blog, with the exception of February.)
I can think of and sympathize with the few instances where ads might be worthwhile or useful, but for the most part, I find them annoying. I guess you can say that I see peoples’ contributions as payment for all of the things they get out of this vast intercontinental library, in a way. Collecting $12,000 every month would be alright phenomenal, but I can’t justify “whoring” my personal projects out in any way that would feel “right” or reasonable to me.
Of course, none of this stops people from calling me out for keeping AdBlock running. Besides using it as a useful toolkit for hiding parts of websites I just don’t want to see, I will admit that I take advantage of the Firefox plugin as it was intended to be used. (Didn’t I just say that I find ads to be mildly annoying?) But, is it really that big a deal that I don’t want to see ads for male enhancement just because you used the p-word word once? I get enough of that every time I check my e-mail, thank you very much.
April 3rd, 2009 on 1:46 am
You could do it without even touching adsense. I’m like you in that I use adblock all the time. I hate ads. HOWEVER, I’ve been working hard for 16 years based on my morals that the only way to get ahead in life is to work hard every day. Well, I’d rather work for myself, as hard as I want, and reap all the benefits.
You’ll find this out for yourself one day maybe. As smart as you are, you’ll find that you will soon be working for people much less intelligent. Those people will be making you do things that they themselves wouldn’t know how to start doing, and they will be paying you far less than you deserve.
My thoughts were that maybe you could save yourself a decade or so of doing this and start making a ton right now. If your personal project can make even $3k a month sitting like it is, with you updating it as often as you do, why would you not want to take advantage of it? It’s your loss man. I was only trying to help.
April 4th, 2009 on 9:58 pm
You may want to check your pagerank again. It went down to 3/10.
April 4th, 2009 on 10:09 pm
Thanks for the heads-up. It was fun while it lasted, I guess.