Dean's World

There's a new blogger syndication and promotion service starting up called Pajamas Media. To my mild surprise, some well-known bloggers, including Madison's own always-excellent Ann Althouse and the incomparable Ace of Spades are rather down on it. Their reasoning appears to boil down to this: you have to give up other ad revenues and accept a flat monthly rate from the Pajamaguys, and they feel that bloggers could do better financially persuing their own ads.

I won't quarrel with that, although I'm a bit surprised at the vehemence. The vast majority of bloggers I know--and I'm certainly one of them--started this with no intention of making money. Most of us do it as a labor of love, and if someone drops a quarter in the tip jar (it's over there on the left hint hint) or buys an ad, that's a bonus.

Although Dean's World has seen consistent and steady growth over the last three and a half years, and has wildly more readers than I ever imagined, the truth is that I don't enjoy thinking about advertisers. I don't want to be blogging thinking about whether or not what I'm writing will drive traffic up or down. I don't want to think about whether it will attract advertisers or not. What success I've found, I've found through adhering to a pretty simple rule:

I write about whatever I want, whenever I want, for whatever reason I want. Anyone else is just along for the ride.

So whenever I find myself thinking, "how can I get more ad money?" or "I got $X in ads last month but only $Y this month, why?" my stress levels go up and I stop having fun.

With these guys, I can stop thinking about advertisers almost completely (unless some ad goes up that I strenuously object to anyway). Pajamas Media will bring in a predictable (if small) amount of income to make it worthwhile, and will also promote your blog and increase its respectability and visibility in the "real media" world. Sounds like a win all the way around to me: I signed up immediately.

I will say that, unlike a few bloggers I've known, I've never seen blogging as a business. Never. I see it as more of a promotional vehicle for if and when I choose to write professionally (by the way, anyone know a good literary agent?). If you're running a business then having a blog can be a great way to promote it. But blogging as a business unto itself? I see that working for very few people. So, a hassle-free, tech support free, steady advertiser to help supplement the income a little, that'll also help promote the blog, and that I can otherwise ignore? Seems like a winner to me.

I just don't want to be in the ad-hustling business. I don't even want to think about the subject. I just want to write. That's why I dig the Pajamas Media approach.