Making Music for Money

Quick, name that source? (see footnote)

A link from fredlet lead me to a clean, simple, aesthetically pleasing blog, called door sixteen. Since I liked the site’s look – and content – I went looking for birthday information, always try to find a link that I can match with a sign. I was working on the short entry about the Thesis WordPress Theme and I thought I could shape something similar. I found the blog’s refreshing lack of advertising to be a selling point. Ironic, isn’t it?

There are very few web endeavors that are pure. There was a certain publishing portal that advertised it was completely non-commercial – they bounced my simple side project because it was too commercial. Oddly enough, that site’s more pure than any other effort with its intrinsic artistic guidelines and directions. Also been more of a commercial success, at one time, for the same reason.

I would compare the two sites, the one that bounced me and door sixteen, but the one that bounced me – the cease and desist note – plainly said to remove all references and link to their site hence no name – another oddity – besides my site’s commercial appeal – was that astrofish.net didn’t get bounced, and that’s plainly ironic.

They do link to multiple sites that run ads, so I figure someone is making some change. But it’s not much, and what goes around?

“As yea sow, so shall yea reap.”

There was a time when I wanted that lean, clean look with no ads. The inherent flaw in that design is that those very ads help defray the cost of making the material available.

With the simple side project, in two, almost three years, it’s paid for itself twice over with advertising revenue.

There is a boatload of advertising on my various sites. Even here, in the eternally experimental and experiential weblog kramerwetzel.com, I’ve toyed with advertising in various forms, more as an additional revenue stream to offset the cost of production, but also as a way to link to the (books/song/CDs/news clipping/blog/hardware/software/etc.) that I find useful. Useful pointers.

I’ve mentioned this in passing, but Amazon is now my quickest/easiest literary research location. Libraries are still cooler, but for fast reference? One, two pokes with a trackpad, type the title, got the dirt.

Following this train wreck of a thought process, what I was striving to do was get back to the simplicity of that non-commercial site.

I’ve played with the rotating images, and the present setting has the advertising header show on the front page of the site, but not on any subsequent page views. Burrowing on my sites – like close reading – will be rewarded. So I’ve been assured.

There is a public privacy policy and slightly off-center disclosure statement.

I build links into a lot of my “electronic distribution” material, but I do so when it’s something I’ve found that I like. Or something I want to mock. Either way. The musical title to this entry? The amazon link does pay a commission, but only if a purchase is made. Even at that, the affiliate commission checks aren’t really that big, just enough to buy a new book every once in a while.

(footnote) Jimmy Buffett, back in the day.