I like repeating that personal rules are made to be broken, at least sometimes and randomly, or else breaking them becomes a rule at its turn and we get trapped in that spiral…
One of my rules or presumed ones is that –in this half hidden space of totally unnecessary erratic thoughts–I would never speak directly of myself. I'm so scared of an apparent "Facebook" effect that I censor myself even when I might speak of something less banal than my uninteresting daily life.
But it happens, like in this case that sometimes from a little happening related to me I can find a pretext for a more general consideration. After all thinking over about things has never killed anyone…
I think to have more or less six or seven readers, who relatively regularly come to give a look at what happened in this virtual corner of cyberspace, which I like imagining like a little cosy café with a lot of free magazines and book at the clients' disposal.
The idea of keeping my virtual café open for them gives me a pleasant motivation.
So what were we speaking of? Ah, yes, this funny little episode which should lead to a more general and less funny reflection.
I receive a couple of days ago a proposal by email from an agency which wanted to insert various advertisings in this humble web site. It was not an automatic mail, like those which are sent to thousands and thousands of small websites, the url of which was captured by search engines in a way I can hardly imagine. It was a personalized letter addressed to my first name and with references to my website appearance and its content. They even proposed me to pay me regularly for that.
I wrote back to refuse politely, explaining shortly that I hate advertising , which has started to pollute nearly every website, and I'm perfectly happy to keep my small one in a blessed condition of advertising-free space.
Today the agency manager wrote me once again, insisting that maybe I had not fully understood and they didn't intend to put any advertising banner in my website, but their proposal was to include an advertising article in my blog as if I had written it myself.
Actually what she wrote was:
"Our advertising model uses text-based adverts. We aim to give you an article that would complement your existing posts and fit the theme of your site. We have highly competent writers that will create a custom article specially made for you."
And she was so generous to offer me 100USD for that.
I immediately wrote back, voluntarily in a slightly melodramatic way, that I was not on sale.
Then I started thinking over about all that. Obviously they have made the same proposal to a lot of niche small websites and very probably many of them have accepted. So that proposal was not so shamefully extravagant after all and several people might consider absolutely normal to sell spaces in their personal websites without any control on that and even accept to mix the posts of their blogs with articles written by others to promote items they don't care for.
I suppose advertising is a necessary evil to sponsor newspapers, concerts, shows and many other extremely expensive activities, which might be useful, educational, entertaining. But I don't see the need favour its proliferation in websites, which are not expensive to maintain.
Once again I don't feel either better or worse than a large majority, but I feel different.
In all cases, I refuse to make compromises with any site with an overdose of advertising. I will not get many visits here, but I'm honoured for the attention of my six readers and their existence is the best spur to keep on doing of my best.
One of my rules or presumed ones is that –in this half hidden space of totally unnecessary erratic thoughts–I would never speak directly of myself. I'm so scared of an apparent "Facebook" effect that I censor myself even when I might speak of something less banal than my uninteresting daily life.
But it happens, like in this case that sometimes from a little happening related to me I can find a pretext for a more general consideration. After all thinking over about things has never killed anyone…
I think to have more or less six or seven readers, who relatively regularly come to give a look at what happened in this virtual corner of cyberspace, which I like imagining like a little cosy café with a lot of free magazines and book at the clients' disposal.
The idea of keeping my virtual café open for them gives me a pleasant motivation.
So what were we speaking of? Ah, yes, this funny little episode which should lead to a more general and less funny reflection.
I receive a couple of days ago a proposal by email from an agency which wanted to insert various advertisings in this humble web site. It was not an automatic mail, like those which are sent to thousands and thousands of small websites, the url of which was captured by search engines in a way I can hardly imagine. It was a personalized letter addressed to my first name and with references to my website appearance and its content. They even proposed me to pay me regularly for that.
I wrote back to refuse politely, explaining shortly that I hate advertising , which has started to pollute nearly every website, and I'm perfectly happy to keep my small one in a blessed condition of advertising-free space.
Today the agency manager wrote me once again, insisting that maybe I had not fully understood and they didn't intend to put any advertising banner in my website, but their proposal was to include an advertising article in my blog as if I had written it myself.
Actually what she wrote was:
"Our advertising model uses text-based adverts. We aim to give you an article that would complement your existing posts and fit the theme of your site. We have highly competent writers that will create a custom article specially made for you."
And she was so generous to offer me 100USD for that.
I immediately wrote back, voluntarily in a slightly melodramatic way, that I was not on sale.
Then I started thinking over about all that. Obviously they have made the same proposal to a lot of niche small websites and very probably many of them have accepted. So that proposal was not so shamefully extravagant after all and several people might consider absolutely normal to sell spaces in their personal websites without any control on that and even accept to mix the posts of their blogs with articles written by others to promote items they don't care for.
I suppose advertising is a necessary evil to sponsor newspapers, concerts, shows and many other extremely expensive activities, which might be useful, educational, entertaining. But I don't see the need favour its proliferation in websites, which are not expensive to maintain.
Once again I don't feel either better or worse than a large majority, but I feel different.
In all cases, I refuse to make compromises with any site with an overdose of advertising. I will not get many visits here, but I'm honoured for the attention of my six readers and their existence is the best spur to keep on doing of my best.
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