Since November of 2007, my website has been monetized. It took a while to be approved by various companies, and I was so thankful when I was! It made me feel legitimate.
The ads were relatively tasteful and unobtrusive, so I didn’t have a problem putting them in my sidebar. Did I make money from my blog? Yes. Was it a ton? No. I didn’t expect it to be, but it more than covered the cost of hosting, etc…which was nice.
Why did I put ads on my site? I just wanted to see what would happen, and the old sales manager inside me twitched when she thought about “leaving money on the table.” Being “paid” to do what I love doing anyway? Sweet.
Lately, though, I’ve been feeling weird about having ads on my site. Everywhere I look, I see ads, and I’m pretty good at tuning them out elsewhere, but this coupled with the “reviews” I’ve been asked to do (which I declined on my own personal principals), and something just wasn’t sitting right with me.
The first thing to go were the reviews. I’m not doing them anymore. Every single review on my site is truthful, but I’m not doing formal reviews anymore. My time is more valuable than what the PR people would have me peddle.
Oddly enough, because of my experiences in online reviews, and even though I never lied in a review, I don’t trust the reviews I read online. There, I said it. There are certain people I trust, so if they write about it, I can tell what is real and what has been suggested wording by a PR person.
I still search online for reviews, but I put different weight on the impromptu reviews. So, in the course of our relatively adventurous lifestyle, if I see something that I like, I’ll tell you about it. If I see something I don’t like, you’ll hear about that, too. That hasn’t changed. To me, those “reviews” mean more than any “review” I read about online, and they’ll still come up in Google when I type in a search phrase.
So, what does this have to do with ads? I think it’s time to break free. I’ve already made enough this year to cover my hosting (or will by the time all the final checks come in), so the twitching sales director in my head is happy. I will be free to focus on my book project, and I won’t have any blog/advertiser publishing requirements hanging over my head.
When I started this writing adventure, I updated the blog every day. Now that I’m working on my book, it’s harder to maintain that level of attention.
So, welcome to the ad-free version of The Casual Perfectionist. Your visit here today hasn’t benefited me monetarily, but I love you anyway. 
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