New and improved! Make cash with your blog...

Is there a more annoying element to blogging than the endless number of great, money-spinning ideas that people come up with? For many people, the whole point of writing a blog is to have it read...but once your wife and friends have read it, what's left? This is the void that was filled by the traffic generating sites like Blog Explosion, Blog Clicker et al. No problem with anything so far but...I was just checking in at a friends blog and saw this comment that someone left with one of his posts:

Quick Question:

If you don't want anyone to know who you are, and your friends know who you are, then why send traffic to it?

Afterall, your friends must have it bookmarked right!

I myself, like to know have a feel for who you are, or I won't even bother
reading your blog. IMO

Robert
Robert | Homepage | 02.26.05 - 9:02 pm

To clarify, this intrepid blogger had run into trouble with his previous blog because some people found it and weren't happy with some of the content...an all to common occurrence these days. So he came up with a new, anonymous arrangement that is suiting the rest of us down to the ground. That is except for Robert. Now I can hear you both saying "who the fuck is Robert and why does his opinion count?"

Turns out he isn't anyone and it doesn't, but he is affiliated with a traffic exchange program called Mystical Maze Hit Exchange and they are running some kind of system where you click links and view blogs and blah blah blah - ho hum - all been done before. When you go into their system, your blog gets wrapped in their maze and links business but you also serve out some banner advertising from their sponsors and that pisses me off.

Besides, who clicks on banner ads? I am sorry to say to any friends of mine that may have banner ads - I never click through on any of them - I am a complete internet cheapskate. Commercialism has ruined the internet for me - that's what was so good about the recent explosion of blogging- no ads and no commercial sites. A small Google sidebar ad or something doesn't bother me but I object to banners being served to pages that I am surfing through.

I cannot see why anyone using the web as recreation tool should need ads on their page. When I come to your blog, it is sort of like I came over to your house and we had a chat (that's how I see most people's blogging activities - you may disagree). Now if I came to your house, would you start the conversation by informing me of some great deals available at blah- blah.com ? Of course not, you don't have visitors to your house so you can earn $0.10 per visit / click through. Same rules apply to personal pages like blogs!

Of course, I don't have to click on the banners, I don't have to wait for the page to load and I can choose to ignore the banner...all valid suggestions. But FFS, there is a principle at stake here, and I actually like to rant now and then.

Now if you're thinking that I have spoken a big ole bunch of crap (and you might be right) - check this out:

• Today there are 6'512 members of the Mystical Maze and the total cash paid out to members is $4'797 to date.

Impressive numbers, I just might sign up myself - do any of you have any suggestions as to what I can buy with my projected average earning of $0.73 ????

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