May 18 2007
Commercial Success or Poor Starving Artist?
That’s what I’ve been asking myself recently. Yesterday amidst a million other things, I sat down with my brother, the (ridiculously) brilliant Ajay, to make a few changes to my blog.
If you’ve come around here in the past (& are astute enough) you’ll have noticed that
*there’s a new bar below my header with links to different pages which has helped de-clutter my home page as much as I could (as advised by Blog Marketing Guru-in-progress)
* I’ve also changed the Technorati Tags at the bottom of each post to Internal tags (as advised by brother Aj)
and finally,
* I’ve ‘given in‘ & added AdSense to my posts (as repeatedly advised, both by brother Aj and Celebrity Blogger M’am)
Those of you who’ve towed the boat with me long enough will remember me writing a post called AdSense or Nonsense? about two years ago. There I listed in painstaking detail why I wouldn’t use AdSense on my blog. If you check out the link now, you’ll find Google ads on that post too.
So I’m feeling like a sell-out. Like I compromised my poor starving artist virtues to make a few bucks (of which I’m not even sure).
To top all this, I’m now think about the number of feeds I have - and how to get more (this earlier never bothered me), I think about things like numbers of hits, I compare notes with bigger & better known bloggers and happy for them though I am, it irritates me I’m not doing as “well” as they are. Why in blazes is my Alexa rank so low?
The commercial part of me convinces me that it’s ok. What’s the harm in putting up a couple of little ads on your blog? It’ll pay for your hosting. After all, you’re not on wordpress or blogger - you’re paying for this yourself.
It convinces me that the more feeds, the more hits, the higher rank; the better my writing must be. “What Crap!”, snickers the artist, but his voice is hardly heard.
The poor-starving-artist within me has grown fat (along with my actual physical self, but that’s another story).
So even as I’m making all these changes for “the better”, I’m wondering whether to just knock them all out and just be who I was.
Or should I be who I am right now? So what if I’ve changed? Change is good, right? The only constant, right?
Unless it’s a change for the worse, right?
Bloody Hell, am not making any sense of this right now.
And PS: I still don’t really know what an Alexa rank is, but I want one. A really High one.
And a PPS too: For those of you out there who may worry, don’t. I’m not compromising my writing based on these things. Not yet, anyway. Hopefully. Sigh.
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Some changes are great, specially those in sidebar and the idea of adding Adsense was a great sense [ I'm still sad not getting approved yet by Adsense after mailing them 10+ times
]. Your Alexa Rank is great and your PR rocks [ PR 4 
Congrats ] !!
Hey but I didn’t noticed any ads anywhere in your site. Any tip?
Grr… Sorry! I’ve installed a ad/phishing blocker plugin and I forgot to add your site in the trusted list … is the ad placements selected by Ajay?
And you don’t ask people to click on your ads, it’s against the terms!
“Show me the money”
Again, Agreed with Ajay, it is against TOS to ask people to click on ads!
Does someone remember something abt the days ahead?
Tsk tsk tsk Agreed you’re no ’spose to ask for clicks. I never ask for clicks. What I ask for is a cure for my disease. You see, I have clicking disease. I get on websites and click away. My clicking is sometimes uncontrollable. I plead with the world to send me a cure for my disease. The person who sends me a sure cure will forever be my friend and will get many visits from me. Perhaps when I visit I will suffer a relapse and start compulsive clicking again. Help, send me a cure!
@ NYdude: Very nice
I haven’t found the pony yet, will keep looking!
Btw, since it’s your first time here, welcome to TVIMH!
[...] the entire day at Melody's house working on her blog. Convinced her to add adsense (which is performing really bad overall for me currently). Also added [...]
Uh huh… As long as you keep eating, enjoyin life to the hilt and writin about it, we wont mind.
I’ve been having ads on my blog for quite some time now, but hardly been going around to check it. Figure it isnt worth the effort
i came up to comment that u werent supposed 2 ask ppl 2 clik…but i c dats already done…
newayz didnt find any ads anywhere…removed them again?
[...] my post where I lamented the fact that I was giving up my poor starving artist mentality to become a [...]
Will quote you on that buddy
(and I mean, again, when I really need too!)
@ Mitesh: You probably have an ad blocker on, ads still up here.
[...] I too occasionally get into the behind the scenes of my blog - and since I was feeling rather good about my blog feeds [...]