Pen-Elayne on the Web

Prelude - Blogging as a Hobby

I have a point to make, which I'll do in my next post, but first let's travel through memory lane.

From Monday for Hobbies and Your Checks for Free, 9/1/03:

I guess I've always spent money on hobbies. I lost track of how many stamps I used to buy back when they were 6¢ each and I had 150 penpals. Back in my INSIDE JOKE days I'd budget X-amount every six weeks for printing and mailing 200 copies of 32 tiny-type pages that I knew I'd never begin to recoup with the nominal $1.50 subscription I charged. I've thrown cash after apazines, videotapes, comics, all the stuff I like doing. Because that's what you do with disposable income, you spend it on things that give you personal satisfaction, without expectation of reimbursement. In my opinion, hobbies are for fun, not for making money.

Now, that's not to say people don't make money from their hobbies. I'm told there are folks who turn profits on all sorts of writing I've done for free, from comics reviews to, yes, blogging. Hey, if they can find people willing to pay them to do what readers can get elsewhere for nothing, on the basis of their experience or unique voice or whatever, more power to them. If someone wants to pay to publish me, that's cool. And if you happen like my writing here and in your undying gratitude you want to shower me with gifts, that's cool too. Weird, but cool.

But asking folks to pay for my favorite years-long hobby, writing in a one-to-many venue, when at long last I'm able to do so without spending a penny? Heck no... I will continue to tsk-tsk at bloggers who blatantly request their readers to monetarily support their hobbies, no matter how politely. Even people I otherwise respect and admire. Nobody's making us blog, nobody's pressing us into hard labor. We blog for the love of it, for the ego boost, because we want to share, because maybe we'll go bonkers if we don't, any number of reasons. And if we choose to go with a service that isn't free, that's our choice and our responsibility to allot the necessary funds, not the responsibility of our readers.

From Sidebar Maintenance Notes, 11/15/03:

Also took my various wish lists off the sidebar and put them into personal bookmarks, as I've gotten less and less comfortable with the idea of bloggers (particularly left-leaning ones) using this type of forum to ask readers to send them money and gifts. Someone reads this, sees my resume, and wants to offer me a job, that's one thing; someone wants to give me a pressie because I happen to entertain or inform them through my hobby, they can certainly approach me in e-mail with a wishlist query.

From Rambling Maintenance Note, 12/10/03:

I'm also considering putting dollar signs next to everyone on my blogroll who engages in cyber-begging (one dollar sign for passive stuff like Amazon kick-back links and PayPal buttons, two for active fundraising appeals and three for bloggers who beg for money even though they have more than most of us do) but, again, I don't want to piss off friends, so I guess I'll continue to blindly hope they'll come to their senses and someday realize the inappropriateness of their actions. (Note, this condemnation doesn't apply to people who actually need the dough to pay rent and food and such, as do a number of unemployed folks on the roll - just those who persist in asking others to help pay for their blogging, a hobby that requires no money to pursue.)

From Crying Wolf, 9/26/04:

While some bloggers are breathless about the NY Times Magazine acknowledging our existence... and revving readers up about how a few people at the top of the food chain are able to make a living from blogging, thus creating the dual false impressions that money is the main reason to blog and anyone can profit from something that's essentially a hobby and isn't supposed to be about making money or begging your readers for same, others keep their eyes focused outward, doing what blogs do best - pointing out items of interest around our world and in our media...

From An Outsider's View, 1/15/05:

But at the same time, it seems to me that it becomes more difficult to objectively distance yourself from political goings-on when you become a willing part of those proceedings, via taking any money from any politicians (including accepting ads from them) whilst being a political blogger. If it's not right when They do it, it's certainly not right when We do it. Yet another reason to stay away from the idea of Making Money Through Blogging - as long as one can blog for free via Blogger or MSN Spaces or whatever, there's no need (other than personal greed) to accept or request money from anyone for blogging. And thus, no possible conflicts of interest can arise. But hey, what do I know, I'm just one of those unnoticed outsider-type political-and-cultural bloggers who does this as a hobby.

From Pandathon 2005, 6/10/05:

I confess I still come down pretty squarely against the idea of blog-begging or putting ads on one's blog site in order to raise money to pay for said site - and I suspect I will as long as the option exists to blog and post comments and even upload pictures for free (I'm proud to say I've yet to spend a single penny to blog and it's going on three years now!).

From Milestone Note, 1/25/06:

With so many bloggers "going pro" and getting paid for their hobby, I expect to see a lot less blog-begging in the near future, which is good for all of us.

From Haggling Over the Price, 1/27/06:

I'm proud to be a member of the No Ads ring hub. As far as I know, all the buttons on my sidebar are for free stuff (mostly services and informational resources), the only exception being my husband's artwork. I was very pleased when Blogger scrapped its banner ads in favor of top-bar search tools, even though it had been plain that bloggers like me who didn't want to pay money for their hobby weren't actually endorsing any of the banner ads. I've never solicited nor succumbed to any entity wanting to advertise on Pen-Elayne; why should I? We'd pay for internet access whether or not I had a blog, and both Blogger and Haloscan are free, so the only "expense" I've ever put into this is my time. Which, yes, is valuable, but it's just as valuable when I read or go to restaurants or play with my cats, and I don't ask for money to support those hobbies either...

From Making Your Money Count(ess), 5/30/06:

As many Pen-Elayne readers know, I have very little patience for blog-begging. I find it irritating and arrogant when bloggers who are not being forced nor hired to write seem to expect monetary compensation as their gods-given due, particularly if they're well off and have already expressed their intention to use the money to buy frivolities and techie toys. We're blessed to live in an age when, aside from the basic costs of being online which one would need anyway for email and such, you never need spend a single cent to blog, so no money ought to be expected or requested of readers to support your hobby until and unless you're hired to do it professionally, in which case it's no longer a hobby.

From Wonkdom, 9/1706:

I'd never ask anyone else to financially support a personal hobby that I've never laid out any money to pursue, and to which I give my time voluntarily and happily without expectation of reward. It's not just the idea of independence, it's the fact that, if I write a really out-of-line post, my conscience is the only thing I need answer to for it. My idea of blog-begging will continue to be "please let me know of any executive assistant jobs available in the NYC area." Because I believe, to the extent that I will ever pay for anything having to do with blogging, that should come from my income, not yours and not some corporation's ads. And it's all to the good if bloggy connections can lead me to a better day job. Because to me that's what blogs are about - not advertising, not making money, not even "turning pro," but strengthening a sense of community.

From Spam Bloggers and Spamming Bloggers, 9/28/06:

Look down my sidebar a bit and you'll see the little icon indicating that this is a no-ads blog. I don't know what you've been told, but not everyone is interested in making money blogging. As I have written time and again, this is a hobby for me; I don't shell out a single cent to blog, I give of my valuable time willingly because I enjoy it, and I have no intention of ever asking anyone else to pay for my hobby. Kindly look elsewhere for greedier people. I'm sure you can find them, even in liberal circles there are tons of blogging hobbyists begging their readers for money. I'm not one of them.

From my Major Mega Meta Post, 10/21/06:

First of all, I have always believed that blogs are not vehicles whereby one should expect to make money. Not just a profit, but any money. That's not what blogs are designed for. Blogs are what you make of them, but essentially they're software tools which make it easy for anybody to become a one-to-many writer with a potentially humongous readership... If you never spend any money for a domain to host your blog, not only do you not have to hold ridiculous fundraisers or ever ask your readers to pay for your hobby (if nobody's hired you to blog and you're doing it because you feel a calling or intrinsic need or just for the heck of it, it's not a profession, it's a hobby)...

From Story of My Life, 12/14/06:

Clearly my work time is cutting into my hobby time! At moments like this I can almost understand people wanting to Make Money Fast via blog-begging, although I like a steady paycheck too much to quit my day job, as draining as it may be.

From Brilliant!, 12/15/06:

I think it's a good idea to treat blogging as a hobby unless you're specifically hired to make money doing it...

From Orgasm for Peace, 12/22/06

Please consider foregoing donations to blog-beggers who want you to pay for their hobby (no matter how wonderfully they write) in favor of giving instead to someone who actually needs it for survival reasons.

That's a pretty comprehensive and (I think) fairly consistent set of quotations from me on this subject. Just bear it in mind.