Writing For Money

That's what freelance writers do. I've popped in from time to time and read the debates about the ethics of putting ads on your blogs. But here's my position. I'm a freelance writer, which means I get paid to write. If someone is going to pay me $5 or more to put an ad on my blog, that makes me a well paid writer. I do the post in five minutes, which gives me an hourly rate of $60. At the moment, I'm the main breadwinner at home and I can't afford to turn down that kind of money.

Paid Freelance Writing

If I asked most people to pay that for my writing, they would laugh in my face and go to someone who will write for less than 1 cent a word. Granted, I hope not to have to do this forever. There are also a few ads I've turned down. Today I've been lucky. They want me to write about search engine optimization and a press release from USWeb about Google's Accessible Search.

What most people question is whether putting an ad for SEO on my blog lessens its quality. Judge for yourself. On all my posts I make it clear that there is sponsorship so people can take that into account when forming a judgement. But the people who pay for ads on blogs pay for links. The rest of the content is up to me.

I was amazed to see a link on another web page (I'll post it when I find it again) referring to me as 'working for Blogitive'. I think whoever posted that missed the point. I work for myself - and that's why I have ads on some of my blog posts. That's also why I can take the time to craft a detailed blog post about an important freelance writing issue.