DISQUS

It's not an issue of right or wrong. It's an issue of "difference" and "change". If you are blogging for fun and you start to monetize your blog, your blogging style changes. Trust me. It does. Your thinking changes. A lot of people think that their hobby has to pay for itself. It doesn't. There is nothing wrong with having no ads on your blog. There is nothing wrong with having ads (though, too many is too much).

It's about the mind set. As mentioned, when the joy goes out of it and it becomes a job, is it worth it to lose your hobby?

And if you do decide to monetize your blog, make a plan. Research. Study. Learn from the experts who made the mistakes first before you start the monetization process.

Enough folks have blindly gone forth and made all the blogging mistakes, so learn from them and plan accordingly to do better. And you will find that your blog is now a business, hobby or not. Things change from when it was for fun.

Biggest change of all? The tax man cometh. :D

Thank you for the recommendations and for the great way you are getting people thinking about these issues. They are so critical and often overlooked, which is why I love bringing them up.

It has long been believed that a hobby is something you do that is not a job. It's what you look forward to doing while at your job. It's something that brings you enjoyment, wisdom, and develops your creativity and imagination. It brings you joy.

Should your joy bring you money? That's a complicated question.

The key is that once you put a monetary value on your hobby, your hobby changes. It becomes about the numbers. It's about the responsibilities that arise from producing income and making contracts and agreements, paying taxes on that income, and all the rest - your hobby becomes a business which makes it no longer a hobby.

When you change a thing, the rules change with it.

As for the question of proper categories on your blog, I'm still looking for the two "best" answers to my challenge.

And yes, your old posts are invaluable resources we often ignore, so thanks for pointing that article out, too. Much thanks.

Quentin Brown, trackback above, is a splog. Thought you should know. I've reported it, but the more the merrier.

Oh, Jonathan, I have plenty of thoughts. Recently, a post on the Blog Herald went ballistic with traffic and comments. It was linked to by a popular blog as a historical reference, and their post was dug by Digg. I had a post which got little traffic which I wrote over a year ago suddenly get dug and I had over 6,000 visitors and 25 comments in one day - mostly people saying how thankful they were about the post, but also asking more really good questions. That resulted in a more articles on the subject, which I'd ignored for a year since there was little response to begin with.

But most of all, by closing off comments, you are letting the spammers win.

I get 3,000 comment spams a day caught by Akismet, sometimes more. In the past couple months, more are getting through as more are spamming my blog. I travel a lot so I have to go one to three days between checking comments for spam and questions. I use the Mass Edit Mode and can quickly dispatch the comment spam that get through. It's manageable.

For me, it is always more important to let the conversation continue at any point. You and I write fairly timeless material, so your article on copyright theft has just as much validity three months ago as it does 2 years ago.

I have a lot of other reasons, but most important, don't let them win!

A study done a while ago on first impressions on the web were different from a first impression from a meeting which I covered in Start the Stopwatch: You Have 50 Milliseconds to Make a Good First Impression. And your timing is good as I just wrote Blogging Tips: First Impressions Count for Problogger, about the various "first impressions" a blog makes outside of a visit to the actual site.

These first impressions differ greatly from physical contact and the old fashioned website thinking. We need to change our whole perspective on the first impression issue. Thanks for bringing it up. I'm looking forward to the conversation and insights on this changing view.

Rave, Review - Confused. :D Thank you for the twist for including me in your list as number 5. Three of your books on the list are tops on mine and I adore them. Excellent recommendations.

Mine is certainly not equal to those masterpieces. It's just a blogging book on blogging tips. :D

Still, thank you for the very kind words and support. You are a star!

I'm sorry that you've decided to take on this myth. From my research and experience, most of the old style comment spam is aimed at older blog posts as their bots are still rolling around the web without stop, but the newer spam bots and trackback spammers are hitting posts published within minutes if not seconds.

Most are caught by Akismet, and I've found that adding Spam Karma and Bad Behavior cuts down comment spam almost to nothing that I have to handle.

And how often do you really publish new posts with new information and not update the original posts? That's an odd reason, Jonathan.

The increase in comment spam is because of your blog's popularity and number of incoming links, not because comment spammers are smarter. It's sad that the conversation needs to be cut off on old posts.

The time consuming part comes from scrolling through Akismet to check false/positives more than dealing with the ones that get through, right?

Nah, nah, I have a 5 gig, I have a 5 gig! :P

I can't live without my little 5 gig pocket drive. It cost less than some 1-2 gig flash drives at the time I bought it, and now the pocket drives go up to 8 gigs, with larger probably on the way.

It's about the size of a facial compact, though a little thicker, but not much. So it does slip right into my pocket and travels easily. I could hang it around my neck, but that might be a bit much. ;-)

I'm loving hearing about what portable applications and stuff people really feel the need to keep with them. It's like "what do you have in your wallet?" kinda thing. Fascinating.

Thank you, and if you could fix the bold problem in my comment, it would be appreciated. Only the "set an example" was to be in bold.

Thanks!

Excellent example of how to be a good blog citizen. One BIG characteristic I think you left off your list was to set an example.

You can set an example of how to be a good citizen of the blogosphere by what you blog about, how you blog, how you respond to comments on your blog and how you comment on other blogs. By setting an example for others, you are helping them learn how to be better bloggers and citizens.

One of the big link mistakes many make is not having their post title in a link, even on the single post view.

1. It's a quick grab with a link copying utility like Firefox's CoLT (Copy Link) Extension to grab the link of the post title and paste it in your blog post for fast referencing.
2. If the page is saved to the computer, it now has a permanent URL to get back to the original online version through the post title.
3. If the page doesn't load right, refresh would work, but sometimes clicking the post title reloads it nice and lovely.

Oh, there's more, but for those of us power bloggers, grabbing the post title off a multi-post view or single post view for copy and paste into our blog posts takes the tediousness out of writing out the link or putting it into a button/popup window, it's the most important reason. Let nothing get in the way of us blogging about your blog post. ;-)

Not knowing what a GTD system is (which is an important point, don't you think?), I appreciate the compliment. :D

And I'd like to add "great point" on the contribution and prove your abilities aspects. I tell all my students and businesses I consult with that their blog is their resume. If it doesn't speak well for them, and contribute to the online world and their business, then don't bother. Thanks for making those points as they are critical.

I love your description "if you can't handle the truth". Well said! Thank you!

Welcome to the Blog Herald crew! I'm so excited. Your insights on this issue are invaluable. Welcome!

It's up to the consumer? Then what are the clues they need to look for on a blog in order to determine if the value is real or not. There isn't a Better Business Bureau for Blogs. No real criteria that helps us to decide who is bluster and who passes muster.

We throw around words like "expert" and "value" all the time without really exploring what they mean and what qualifications they have. I'm just asking people to think about how they use these words and how they determine the expert value of a blogger. I think bloggers need to explore this for themselves as well as for the "expert" blogs they visit.

Which then begs the question of defining "value".

We throw these words around as if they mean something. If they do, what do they mean? How would you know if a blog you are visiting has the value that makes it qualify as "expertise"? unless you cruise through and inspect and verify everything that is said.

There are a lot of bloggers who have a lot to say who call themselves experts but the evidence isn't there to back them up. The volume is, but the validity isn't.

So what does "value" mean in this context?

Jess, you should be. CAPTCHAS don't work and they also tend to tick off users. I'm looking at one on this blog that I can barely figure out what the letters are right now.

It's kinda like gambling. I don't know if this will work when I hit the submit button. Based on years of experience with these, most of the time they don't work and I have to try again or give up. Painful.

With the growing sophistication of comment spam bots, and the growing number of hired human comment spammers out there, these are easily overcome. CAPTCHAs are not a defense but a nuisance.

The rest of the arsenal in the article is great, and Spam Karma can add a great third line of defense, picking up what Akismet and Bad Behavior miss and acting as a backstop.

Which Related Posts?

And welcome back to the fold. We've been missing you! ;-)

Too funny! You're trying to start something here, aren't you? ;-)

BTW: The comments policy thing is interesting, though painful to use. How about a link back to the last page visited with a refreshed page view so only those who understood what I just wrote could leave a comment. :D

Just a bit of clarification. Lorelle on WordPress and the Blog Herald are not for sale, though I can't speak much for the Blog Herald. I can however speak for Lorelle on WordPress. ;-)

You aren't alone. I've done this...let's just say "before" and not how many times. ;-) Good for you for catching it so soon.

One thing I HATE is when I make a mizzed spelling in the title and post slug. I can fix it easily in the title, but the post slug, well, after it's been linked to by a few hundred folks, it's hard to change that, but redirect definitely helps. Wish I could do that on WordPress.com blogs.

I'm glad you are excited about the month of February. Something to look forward to!

Be sure and stop by to let me know if you have any specific WordPress Plugin topics you'd like to see covered. I'm taking requests. ;-)

The only "defense" I've found in the value of Snap Preview Anywhere is for sites which feature, specifically, links to web designs, Themes, and portfolio/graphic sites. Then the graphic thumbnail shown would influence the potential visitor and give a preview of the visual image.

Other than that, I've found beautiful content in ugly designs and ugly content in beautiful designs. Pretty doesn't mean much on the web when it doesn't have the information you need.

SCORE ONE FOR THE GOOD GUYS! This is fabulous. Your post makes my war on comment spam totally worthy.

And on behalf of your readers, who might not understand what your action really means to them, thank you.

Remember, Akismet is a learning tool so marking any comment spam that gets through sends a note to Akismet to help them learn what is comment spam and what is not. We still have a year or so before the battle against comment spam is closer to perfection as the comment spammers are always trying to beat the system. So far, the folks behind Akismet and other WordPress comment spam fighting tools are 2 steps ahead of them.