I don't know where I fit into all of your online lives, but I know what I think about you guys as readers. A recent business offer gave me occasion to think about that. So here's what I think and why I'm thinking about it.
Occasionally I get offers to commercialize my blog and make some money from it. A couple money-making big blog friends of mine ask periodically why I don't try to take the blog bigtime - my writing is apparently okay when I take time to edit it, the topics are sometimes funny, and evidently I say what a lot of you are thinking but can't quite articulate; or I say exactly the opposite of that and give you a chance to argue. Yeah, I'm the blogger's blogger, in the same way that, say, John Prine is the songwriter's songwriter. He doesn't have tons of fans, except among good songwriters...
So my response to their question is always the same: I have a good job and I'm not really trying to make money here. If it happens and it fits with my project, cool. If not... who cares!
Sure, I sometimes recommend good stuff and include an Amazon product link. I get a small referral fee and if you buy what I link to, I make a few bucks. It's a nice deal but I almost do it as a convenience for you - the pay is only nice if I recommend something popular and expensive that a lot of you then go and buy. I sometimes point you to local shops. I do that because I think you can find what you need at a particular shop, or because you should support shops that generously support local racing. And as far as I know, all I get from that is good will.
So moneymaking is not my purpose in blogging. I blog instead because entertaining and interesting things happen all the time in biking and racing and sometimes to me, and this is a place to chat about it, and and hear what others with common interests have to say. This is a corner bar, a water cooler, or the front porch of my cycling life. It's where we swap stories and have some yucks.
I don't want to screw any of that up.
As the man said, we kinda got a relationship. A couple different ones, really. The first relationship is riders who speak to each other and think through things and help each other enjoy our sport, in a collegial and uncomplicated way. The second aspect of a relationship is that a lot of us have real world relationships. Me, I don't want to screw up my real life relationships with you or people I do business with as a race promoter or rider, or with folks in my professional life. The third relationship is the relationship of my online persona to my actual person; I need to stay true to myself and don't do anything that would be inconsistent with how I try to live.
So the offer I received recently was simple. I was asked if I was willing to put up a link to a new website that will sell tons of bike gear - imagine the bike section of BackCountry.com. In exchange, I'd get enough money to pay for race entries for maybe 2/3ds of cross season. That's not big money but it ain't chump change either.
I had to think hard about that. My wife recently scaled back her work to part time; I'm always guilty feeling about the considerable sums I dump into my bikes. So it'd be nice, then, to be able to say my race entries were paid for by the blog.
But there are other things to think about. I really don't want to be pimping a website that I don't personally use yet and probably never will (so how can I recommend it to you?) and I don't want to cut against my general instinct to support the folks who sponsor my team, sponsor our races, and serve the local community.
The thing about not sending all of you to a website I don't know much about yet or use myself is a big concern for me. When I say a product is good or bad, I do so honestly, based on what I know about it from first hand, or trusted second hand factual information. If I get something for free to test from a shop or the local hydra headed group omniblog, I tell you that. When I say gear or a book is good, or to visit a local shop for a particular need, it's because I mean it and that's what I'd do myself.
Pointing you guys to a website that I don't yet use - and probably won't in light of the generous pro & bro deals I get from the shops I associate with - seemed like it would be a little bit off in light of the relationship we have, the little community of readers / friends who gather here, and how things have operated in the past. Yeah, I like the status quo. It's nice.
So after thinking about it for a couple days and asking a few friends for their thoughts, my initial reservations were confirmed and with some regret I turned down the offer.
This doesn't make me a paragon of integrity, and please don't think that I'm claiming that mantle or trying to come off as a martyr. It's just that you are honest with me about what you are thinking and I strive to be honest with you. A blind link to a company I don't know much about, in exchange for caish money, just isn't consistent with how I've run the blog so far.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not condemning other bloggers who establish a relationship with this particular company. In fact, it looks like a wonderful company and I wish them all the success in the world. I'd be happy to entertain other offers from them to do other things, because they seem to be straight shooters and it looks like they'll go big pretty quick. It'd sure be nice to be hitching my wagon to that star, even for token benefits.
But it's not where I'm at right now, and if I went for it I'm not sure all of you would think the same way about me. More importantly I'm not sure if I'd think about me in the same way.
As noted above, I ain't trying to impress you or anything with all this. I just thought you'd appreciate knowing where I'm coming from.
7 comments:
Sooo. An attorney concerned with integrity and truth-telling. I'm not sure that I can exist in such a world. All I held to be true must now be questioned...
So it's OK to pimp your ride, but not to pimp your blog. I'm comfortable with that boundary. There are blogs that I've really loved that have fallen out of my favour due to subtle shifts in focus once they mortgaged their soul to advert banners.
Dr. Brett, please don't chalk it up to a preoccupation with integrity. It's not worth it to me right now to fundamentally change the relationship I have with readers, real life race/club business partners and with myself. Were there a big time offer on the table (as if!) I'd figure out a way to do it, but I'd still want to be very up front about it and disclose with you guys what I thought the re-written terms of the relationship were. I'm guessing people who write gear reviews at bike and car magazines face this dilemma, when they're taking ad revenue in the left hand and writing reviews with the right.
Mike - that's a good point and a natural transition. I don't have any problem at all with a blog taking ad revenue, but if they do, they have to be pretty careful about steering people to products - fully disclose any possible conflicts of interest, or stay away from recommending / disparaging gear. I think the FTC actually has some new regulations or a recent ruling on this, focused on disclosure of benefits received.
I think full-disclosure is always the best policy. For example, I'm an optometrist and for continuing ed credits, there will forever be speakers touting a medication or something, and...surprise! They happen to be sponsored by big pharmacy. If they disclose it I am willing to listen, but otherwise it just looks like bullsh...I tend to look with a very critical eye at "research studies" with results provided by the manufacturer of the meds, etc. Your credibility is worth it!
Holy shit, Dr. Brett. You sound just like one of my cousins, Doctor Pinkeye, a guy who is basically a brother to me, who is also an optometrist. We usually turn his continuing ed trips into booze / golf junkets. Every day after his classes, before we hit the links or the ballgame, it's a half hour debrief on how he got 25% clinical education, and then 75% business advice that boils down to how to diagnose a particular condition more often, how to prescribe more meds, and how to build up a lucrative branch of the business around some condition that is usually not particularly treat-able, e.g. dry eye syndrome. Drives him batshit - as he puts it, "I'm sure they're very smart businessmen." The part of the sentence he leaves off there is "but borderline unethical doctors." I get the sense he can't stand hanging out with a lot of the other optometrists because many of them seem to be into building a practice this way. Legal, but sketchy in a lot of senses. He became an eye doc because he could barely see as a kid, and an optemetrist helped him to see again, and he wanted to help other people see better. He's got the kind of personality and business acumen that could make him wealthy, and as an optometrist he's one of just three guys in his region that the surgeons entrust with follow-up care; but he's more interested in treating people than in maximizing his profits.
Come to think of it, my dad - Doc Pinkeye's uncle - did a lot of fathering of Doc Pinkeye after Doc's mom died and dad split. My dad operating his accounting practice in a similar manner. Makes me think that my dad, not the NY State Court of Appeals, is responsible for my sense of ethics.
Amen. I just feel that if you do what is in the patient's best interest, your pocketbook will follow. Too many lectures talk about how Medicare will "allow" you to bill so often for a particular test, with no thought as to whether or not perhaps that is too often or too seldom for that particular patient.
Most patients (and I'm sure you notice, most clients as well) can smell bullshit when you are doing something in your wallet's interest instead of their own. Good to know there are more like minded OD's and attorneys out there.
I'm just a lurker, basking in the glory that is you along with picking up the occasional new band. I like your site and, mostly, your take on things. I don't have any sand in my crotch over ad revenue but anecdotally it seems that the more a site turns to such the further it veers from what drew me to it in the first place. I want you to become filthy rich and world famous but I also want you to remain the humble and self effacing glorious voice of All Things Bicycling I have come to admire and...dare I say it?
Love.
Perhaps you just need to run ads for non-bicyclie things.
I hear that Viagra stuff is pretty keen. Not that I'd know.
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