Why I Went Ad-Free

A little over a month ago, my husband and I converted our messy, storage-filled attic into a quiet, grown-up room. We cleared out the old blankets and clothes and plugged in a stereo and a lamp. We made a twin bed look like a couch. An old wooden table became our desk, which we positioned to face the window.

Virginia Woolf said you needed a room. But she didn’t say it had to be a clean room. The walls could use a lot of paint. The stained carpet is an ugly reminder that a teenager used to do God-knows-what up there. But it is a room just for us, to write, to read, to enjoy. No kids are allowed. I’ve taken to calling it the Artist’s Cove.

Two weeks ago, I opened this blog to my latest post, “September.” I really liked the photograph I had used (and credited, of course) from Flickr: a delicate orange leaf resting on asphalt after a gentle coating of rain. But what was that, over there, to my right? Something was dancing and moving and really trying to get my attention.

Oh. My ads. One day, it was a futon. Another, laundry detergent. And then some sort of movie with doctors who were not nearly as attractive as the ones from Grey’s Anatomy.

What had I done to my beautiful blog? My virtual artist’s cove?

Well, I knew what I had done. I had written BlogHer and skimmed through some sort of form here and there, and then signed a contract and scanned it and sent it off to the “Ads Team.” (I wonder if they have a mascot?) I had written to my designer, the wonderful Sarah Fite, and asked her to go in and work her HTML magic and add a “tune-in bar” and the code for advertisements. And then I had watched as Justin Bieber took up residence in the top left corner of my blog for most of the summer. (Seriously, I still don’t know who the hell that kid is.)

I signed on with BlogHer because I think it’s a great organization devoted to empowering women through writing and blogging. They syndicate posts from women all over the blogosphere, hold contests to help new bloggers and writers gain exposure. Over all, they’re an awesome resource. But their tune-in bar was bright blue on my red and beige color scheme. Their ads consisted of a lot of moving pictures. And their name had to be “above the fold” of my blog, which meant that my cute little author-esque photo and bio had to be moved down so that, well, you couldn’t see me anymore. (That last part seemed especially poetic.)

I have grappled with the concept of ads on a blog for a long time now. When I first started this blog in January of 2010, I knew little about branding and advertising. I didn’t know what a widget was. But then I read the article in the NY Times, “Honey, Don’t Bother Mommy. I’m Building My Brand,” and recognized—even admired—the power that women bloggers have in the blogosphere. As a neo-blogger, I was upset by not only the condescending tone of the article, but the negative reactions readers expressed in the comments. Once again, our cultural ideal of the sacrificial mother reigned supreme: mom bloggers weren’t paying enough attention to their children when they were on the computer, trying to earn some semblance of an income and connect with like-minded people. Oh, and they weren’t moral, either, for using Johnny’s lost tooth as fodder for ad revenue.

But in essence, having ads on one’s blog is sort of like getting paid to write. Only instead of some agent with a hairy hand, you have the invisible hairy hand of the market dictating how much money you’ll make on the latest post. Who were we to question the invisible hairy hand? And why not let good writers make money?

I would never begrudge another woman her right to an income, however small. But I’ve decided it’s not for me. Every time I went to my web page, I felt like I had handed something over, given something up. When I started this blog, all I could imagine was what I’d be gaining—a community, a sense of purpose, an ability to pursue my passions, a much-needed escape. Money pales in comparison to all of that. Besides, I don’t want any hands but my own, hairy or otherwise, dictating the content or the visuals of my little rented space on the internet. A space that costs a little, yes, but one I have grown to love.

I do hold out hope that one day, a person with hairy legs (because that is something I understand) will sit across a table or a computer screen from me and dictate how much money I’m going to make off of a larger body of work. I know that when that day comes, I will most likely not be able to quit my day job. At the least, though, I should be able to polish off an expensive bottle of champagne. (And a handbag. I have a little thing for handbags.)

So if you’re looking for magic laundry detergent, you’ll need to go somewhere else to find it. From the look of things, no one is doing laundry here.

Image: “21 Coins of the Money Changers” by auntjojo via Flickr.

Be Sociable, Share!

• 

Tagged as: ad revenue, ads, advertisements, blogging, BlogHer, brand building, capitalism, invisible hand of the market, New York Times