There but for the grace of pageviews go I: where blogging and my business are going
Last week, I sent an email to all the Offbeat Empire staffers with the subject line: Required reading. The email contained a link to this post: State of the blog union: how the blogging world has changed. This post was written six months ago, but whatever: it’s a big fucking deal. It spawned this enormous post.
Disclaimer for sponsored posts and other monetized content
My strategy for much of the advertising on the Empire has always been that it doesn’t FEEL like advertising. I do this not because I’m trying to trick anyone, but because I find disruptive advertising annoying and bothersome… so therefore, rather than have sponsored posts written by some random advertising client, all our sponsored posts are written by us, in the same voice that the rest of the posts are written in.
I’ve invested significant design and developer time/money into trying to be as transparent as possible about my monetized content, but there’s still confusion sometimes.