My advertising policy
If you look near the top of the column to the right, you should see a little box that says BlogAds. Right now, the only thing in it is the link to click if you want to advertise here. In a week or so, there will be an ad for T’s video editing and transfer service. (He edits home movies for people and records them to DVDs. It makes a great holiday present for the grandparents. If you’re in the DC area, he’ll even come right to your house.) At some point, someone might even decide to pay me to advertise here. It’s mostly an experiment at this point — I’m not desperate for the cash, but I’m interested in seeing whether this blog could even cover its costs.
Since there’s been some controversies related to blogging and advertising, I thought I should lay my policies out for the record.
1) There was a huge kerfluffle over the summer about an ad that TBS ran on Kos’ blog for The Real Gilligan’s Island. Several people thought it was sexist and offensive, and complained to Kos about it; he dismissed their concerns in terms that were pretty condescending and obnoxioius. If you ever see an ad here that ticks you off, please let me know. I don’t promise I’ll yank it, but I do promise to take your comments seriously.
2) More recently, Tim Kaine pulled an ad that he had run on Steve Gilliard’s blog after Gilliard portrayed Michael Steele as a minstrel (eg in blackface). Gilliard went ballistic, and Kos backed him up, arguing that this has a "chilling effect" on bloggers’ self-expression. I agree with Ezra Klein that they’re delusional if they think politicians (and other advertisers) aren’t going to steer clear of controversy like that. I promise that I’m never going to censor my posts for fear of scaring advertisers, or say nice things about them because they bought an ad. Trust me, it costs a lot more than $10 a week to buy me off.
Finally, a question about the visuals. That right-hand column is getting awfully long, as I add more and more features to it. Should I switch to a 3-column format, which looks a bit more cluttered, but doesn’t require as much scrolling to see all of the links? Or are you all reading via bloglines and don’t care?
November 20th, 2005 at 10:14 pm
Well, I read on bloglines, but come to comment often. FWIW, I think the three-column layout is fine.
November 21st, 2005 at 9:11 am
Current format doesn’t bother me. I see more and more blogs going to three columns. Some have done it well; others, it’s annoying. If you feel like the right column is too long, you can shrink the number of book reviews there (they’re all in ‘Books’ as well, right?) and go to pull-down menus for categories and archives. (I don’t use TypePad so I don’t know what’s possible and what’s not, but I think TypePad enables pull-downs.)
November 21st, 2005 at 10:32 am
I come here to read it– I don’t use Bloglines, I think I’m one of the last people around who doesn’t! Lots of blogs seem to be going to three columns, which is fine with me, and any way you want to streamline your design is fine too.
basically, whatever makes you feel better about your blog (ads, design changes) is fine with me, as long as you keep posting!
November 21st, 2005 at 8:51 pm
I read at the site (I have started using bloglines but I just like seeing the formatting on the sites, so I’ve not really gotten into the feed readers). I”m not wild about most of the three column layouts that are emerging–I don’t like to have to scroll down so much for the current posts. But you can try it and see how the posts’ readability changes, I guess. I don’t mind scrolling down the right column if I’m looking for things, either.