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My drug of choice is writing––writing, art, reading, inspiration, books, creativity, process, craft, blogging, grammar, linguistics, and did I mention writing?

Friday, July 24, 2015

Big News

We have big news!
I often ask people to turn off their adblockers just for this site, and if you ever did, you probably noticed right away that something is a little different in the layout of the site.

If not I'll just tell you:

Writing About Writing is going ad free.

I've sort of been hoping to be able to do this for a while, but I couldn't afford to get rid of any income stream, no matter how small or annoying. However, these last few months (and really the last year or so) have shown me that donations are worth much much more than the trickle of ad revenue. I might be missing out on a couple hundred a year, and if something goes viral, I'm sure I'll second guess whether this was my wisest move ever, but it's better this way.

I can get away with a tiny bit more if I'm not running a commercial site, but mostly the reason is I don't like the adsense/Blogger model. I'd rather make a little less getting donations from those of you who really like W.A.W. than to try to beg you periodically to turn your adblock off and be exposed to the pinnacle of a lot of shit I really hate. (Mass consumerism, rampant commercialism, lifestyle obsession.) Besides, you guys are now coming in at the rough average of 20 TIMES more in awesome and generous donations than I was making off of ads. So even though I'm not making enough to really write off any revenue stream, that one is worth the loss.

There may come a day when an advertiser approaches me. I know popular blogs often hook up directly with products, but if that happens it will be a product I really believe in, and I'll be able to make sure the ad itself isn't skeevy.

In case it isn't clear, let me say it again: it was you all and your donations that made this possible. When I started, ads were my ONLY source of revenue. I made about $100 dollars in the first nine months. Now ads are a minor income stream and I can follow my convictions and get rid of them.

That's because of all of you.

You take my breath away, and I will keep writing the best I've got in me to justify your support.

(I'll have to adjust things like my guest blogger payment policy and the "Ways to support us" question in the FAQ, but other than a cleaner layout, less bile in the back of your throat, and the occasional rogue, unbidden, and unconscious thought that how are you ever going to get published without a correspondence course MFA and copy editing by Grammarly, this shouldn't affect readers too much.)

3 comments:

  1. I might at some point a few years from now wish to purchase advertising space on your blog ... >.>

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  2. I hope that the publishers of Strunk and White's "little book" eventually ask you about advertising on WaW.

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  3. "...copy editing by Grammarly..." made me snicker. Yeah, sure, I use Grammarly for an initial run through on a lot of things. But, dang! Copy editing?? Too funny! I sent them a list of errors in their program today that had 18 screenshots. I've started prefacing my 'requests' with, "Hi, it's your favorite English major, Word Nerd and pain in the patootie!" They have a really hard time telling the difference between the American and British spelling for so many words. Can't understand words that could be either a noun or a verb. Prepositional phrases completely throw them for a loop. Oh, gods... and the list of words they don't understand! Rune... sword... hilt... REALLY??

    Copy editing by Grammarly. Okay, now I'm giggling.

    ReplyDelete