Elberry, pleading poverty, has added a Paypal feature to The Lumber Room. Asking to be paid for your bloggery is an interesting idea, and I don't blame Elberry (he has a fine blog) though personally I baulk at it.
Let’s call it ‘blegging’. Gaw suggests that blegging is objectively no different from publishing a novel and expecting to get paid. I can kind of see that but the market is very different. With so many blogs out there I think what Elberry is doing is more like busking. A blog could potentially give you a springboard for publishing, say, a novel (and being spotted busking or playing a free pub gig might conceivably get you a record deal).
You could, I suppose, demand a subscription for reading your posts, but with the newspapers publishing content for free (a disastrous situation which surely can’t continue for long, by the way), you’d have to be bloody good to justify it.
Nobody asked me to start this blog. I’m grateful to my little collection of readers. If anything, I should probably pay you for your time and comments, though, of course, I won’t.
daylight bloggery if you ask me
ReplyDeleteI suppose its worth asking getting paid if you actually blog full time.
Personally I spend about 4 seconds in between emails at work crafting my feeble posts. Cheques to the usual address please
Funnily enough, I've been considering adding this feature to my own blog. The only reason I hesitate is that I'm sure that no bugger would bother giving me money. And why should they? Everything is free these days. Isn't it?
ReplyDeleteIt's great this chaos, isn't it? I wonder how it will turn out. Let a thousand flowers bloom...
ReplyDeleteSell your body, blog with a Polish accent while wearing a fur coat, pretend you commute weekly from Gdansk to Hamburg, it's an honest occupation, the oldest.
ReplyDeleteElberry should should go work down the corners in the projects, it would be the making of him, round off his character.
Charging for content won't help newspapers. Where the internet has hurt them most is small ads and competition for advertising. I doubt any newspaper has ever made money from it's coverprice.
ReplyDeleteI'd gladly accept money for reading your blog but I feel it would somehow cheapen the experience, as it does when I accept money for my other services.
ReplyDeleteSimon and others: I find it an interesting debate, how the newspapers will cope. I posted on it here. There was also an interesting piece on Politico, the US political website, in Vanity Fair this month here.
ReplyDeletei too felt ambivalent, as i don't like to make the people who don't donate to feel they're being stingy. i hate charities but have become one myself.
ReplyDeleteAmusingly, my excuse was that it would help break my pride down, to let others help me; and when the first bucks started rolling in by God i was glad of it. Since i subscribed to give a tenner a month to another blogger, i felt it was somewhat perverse to refuse to let people do the same for me; it suggested contempt for this other blogger, when in fact i just felt glad i could help out.
It has meant i can afford to go for an interview in London; i'd decided to decline the interview on the morning i got my first donation - just enough to take the train ticket down to a manageable level.
i think (hope) i would take the donate button off if i actually had a job, though perhaps i'll tell myself my pride continues to need some breaking down.