Two Slashes

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.