VC Blogger makes good
I’ve been reading a good number of VC and Entrepreneur blogs this year and it struck me as somewhat ironic that of all the blogs I read, it seems the VC blogs serve a disproportionate number of ads. Given that VCs are entrepreneurial and coin-operated by nature this didn’t entirely surprise me. That said, successful VCs are the last group of folks that need the additional cash from serving a few ads.
I asked Fred Wilson of “A VC” about this as he’s got a ton of ads on his site and he is a very active blogger. Fred responded quickly and mentioned he donates all of the ad proceeds to charity. He also blogged about it today, naturally. Fred has some pretty impressive traffic numbers (2 million page views and 1 million views via feeds) and plans to donate around 40k to charity from the ad revenue. I think this is a great thing to do, and hope that others take his lead. Kudos Fred!
I don’t see anything wrong with monetizing your thoughts and ideas online in principal. One could draw parallels to traditional content/media sites… I think there are pros and cons:
Pros:
- it takes time and energy to be a good and relevant blogger, so seeing some compensation for your efforts is rewarding (hey - time is money!)
- serving ads also helps you learn more about the ad business and your visitors.
- you can use the revenue to fund other projects, or even better charities as Fred has done
Cons:
- the ads can be annoying to look at, and they break up the visual flow of many sites
- some people can perceive blog-advertising as being greedy or cheap
- managing ad placement and watching your ad revenue can be big distractions
