Over at Daring Fireball, John Gruber has a long column explaining why he’s adding advertisements to his site. He makes several interesting points along the way (jabbing at Business Week specifically, and the “corporate” media in general), and I enjoyed reading most of the essay, but I was surprised by his mild defensiveness about his decision to include advertisements. It was only mild defensiveness, but he didn’t need to apologize for anything. There is nothing wrong with trying to make money from a blog. It may or may not work, and if you don’t make money, that doesn’t make your effort a failure — but everyone is welcome to try whatever they like. Your audience will reward or punish your efforts either way, with their time or their absence. And that’s the part that Gruber pinpoints so well.
… The lone natural resource in the media landscape is attention. Your attention is what all media are fighting for, and the laws of physics place finite limits upon it. … So effectively, Google’s AdSense is an exchange system for converting your attention into money. … Don’t sell yourself short — your attention is valuable, and advertisers are willing to pay handsomely for it. [Three discontiguous sentences from a long essay: forgive me.]
Given my bent — remember this site’s tagline re: time? — my readers will understand that I think these opinions are nothing short of brilliant, if not novel.
One other part of his essay worth noting was his stated interest in quality of audience over quantity. Quote: “My goal for Daring Fireball is not to attract the largest possible audience. Rather, I’m trying to attract the smartest possible audience.” It looks better on his site, with curly quotes and all, but you get the idea. Scoble wrote something similar in April: “Personally, this whole world worries too much about quantity, and not enough about quality. Give me a small audience, please! Even if it ends up being just my mom.”