Would you buy this Consumer Joe / Words For My Enjoyment lunchbox?
Don’t answer – because I would never ask you to do so. And yes, I know the image is way too small for the lunchbox so you probably wouldn’t buy it anyway because if you were going to buy a lunchbox with the logo of my book on it you would want the world to see it, and in this situation, this product wouldn’t serve you in the way you wanted it to. So, yes — I get that.
What I don’t get (and it’s nothing personal to one person specifically who does this kind of thing and reads WFME) is why people with blogs are selling products with their blog logos on them. Shirts, lunchboxes, mouse pads, etcetera. Really, is there a market out there for these things?
There was a time, for about 23.4 seconds when I wondered to myself if maybe I should start selling Consumer Joe t-shirts. You know, maybe there were fans out there who would want to wear their favorite book’s cover on their chest. In reality, if they did — they could simply download a picture of the book from Amazon and make it themselves at Cafe Press. But I could see the logic in possibly doing that for my book. But Words For My Enjoyment? What sane person would want to walk around wearing a picture of my smiling face or a scrabble-ized logo for the blog? (If you are a person who would, please tell me why.)
Along with blog merchandising, I am not a big fan of people who basically pan-handle for money on their blogs by using the PAYPAL box. They ask for just a few dollars — help keep the site up. I don’t know, it strikes me as odd, also. I guess, yeah, if you enjoy the writing on a daily basis and the guy or girl doing the writing has ZERO CASH and can’t afford to pay for their server, maybe that’s why they’re doing it. But, you know, I just can’t stomach it. So how are people writing blogs supposed to make money writing their blogs?
They’re not.
Blogs aren’t for making money. They’re for expressing your thoughts and sharing them with other people. If, every time, I got together with my friends I asked them to buy a t-shirt or give me five bucks — my friends would start hanging out with me less and less.
And if you ask people for money on your blog — the same could occur.
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