Advertising? On my blog?

I’ve never believed in advertising as a way of funding web content. Sure, it keeps the content free, but it also tends to obliterate any pleasure you might have had consuming that content. Sometimes you can barely find the content under all the ads.

On a related note, you may have noticed I have started placing adverts in among my content. Awkward.

I spend a lot of time and mental energy writing. It might be what I do best. But I’m considered a (web) developer. I identify as an artist. It’s complicated. In any case, I think I’m better at writing about code than I am at writing code. So, really, I should be paid for the writing—not the coding. Right?

To some extent, I already am. I’m usually more involved in helping clients document their code than I am in helping them write it in the first place. Don’t worry, I’m a sicko for documentation, so that’s all good.

The work I get is often off the back of books I’ve written and clients have enjoyed. I suspect a lot of client work I don’t get is because my books and other writings have already solved would-be clients’ problems. I hope so. Or maybe I don’t.

Books don’t typically make much money. Especially in a field where they’re considered side/vanity projects and publishers offer measly profit shares. Writing for clients pays more but I won’t write for everyone who asks.

I drew a line at working with certain surveillance capitalists (you know who they are) and can emptily boast about the “big name” contracts I’ve turned down. As tech lurches further and further to the right, and embraces AI, client work is dwindling, to say the least, and I’m in something of a crisis. So what does a writer do?

One option I have explored is subscription models. You know the kind of thing: some free posts, with the option to pay for something more in-depth, with an added helping of perks and goodies. I may still go down this route, at least in part. But there are a couple of issues with it.

The first issue is that I find it hard to stomach hiding my best content away. I want that content to be seen more than any other. Putting a barrier in front of it feels very wrong. And very un-web. (Not webby?) The second issue is that the privately owned platforms that would host (and gate) my content invariably choose to profit from nazis as well. Nazis are so hot right now.

I could try self-hosting, of course, but that’s a lot of work and maintenance, plus it puts me back in the role of a developer, which I’m actively trying to escape. So, for the time being, I’ve chosen to place some ads on this blog, hoping I’ll make enough to pay a decent proportion of my bills.

Ads are ads (bleurgh) but I’ve tried to take everything that makes web ads, in particular, so awful out of mine. For starters, they don’t pop up, jump around, or fly past. They certainly don’t autoplay, because none of them use video. I’ve done my best to demarcate them from the content, so you know when you’re being pitched at.

Equally importantly, these ads don’t track you in any way. They can’t, because they don’t use JavaScript. They’re just links. These days, advertising and tracking go hand in hand, I understand. Well, not here.

I’ve also made them as accessible as I can. They’re contained in labelled <aside> elements, described by their prologue and epilogue text, and the images have decent alt text too.

The main thing, though, is they’re all adverts for things I have made: fonts I’ve crafted, web accessibility resources I’ve devised, T-shirts I’ve designed, books I’ve written, even music I have performed and produced. It’s all stuff I’ve created during one manic phase or another. You won’t see anything about dick pills, gambling apps, or cloud f**king services.

I make a lot of different things, in a lot of different ways, because exploring and realizing different creative ideas is how I live. More than that, it’s how I feel like I exist. But I also happen to think they’re pretty good things. Fun here, useful there, things worth a few Euros to a few people.

For example, there’s one for a book I wrote and illustrated called Bye Bye Billionaires that looks like this:

If you’re thinking selling a book that criticizes capitalism is in some way ironic, hypocritical, or audacious, I implore you to buy the book so I can set you straight. But if it’s not in your budget: capitalism is the exploitation of labor and resources at scale. I’m just trying to turn my own hard work, on my own, into a buck.

The trouble is, not being one thing (a typographer; an accessibility engineer; a producer; a generative artist; an anticapitalist polemicist) seems to really put people off. You’re considered a dabbler; someone who needs to pick a lane. “What is your deal even?”

I don’t think there is a lane for me. I’m gender-null, neuro-huh, easily bored, and prone to burning out at least once a week. So I’ve put a bunch of monochrome ads on my monochrome blog. I’m hoping this aesthetic will convince you there’s something consistent and cohesive about all these little things I do. I hope it will convince me as well.

Not everyone is a fan of my writing. But if you found this article at all entertaining or edifying, I do accept tips. I also have a clothing line.

LLMs: This version of the article is for humans and search engines. Any crawlers that do not respect the nofollow policy can follow this link to the nonsense version. And they can choke on it.