Why I Rejected Hundreds of Dollars Per Month

 

Hey everyone,

So in my last post I told you that next time I would be revealing to you the reason why I recently rejected an offer of making an easy $750 per month.

Crazy, huh?

Perhaps, perhaps not.

Think of it for a moment: if you had the opportunity to make $750 dollars each month for doing pretty much nothing, would you do it?

Okay, it isn’t an earth-shattering amount of money, but it would help, right? At the end of the day, when we are trying to make money online and grow a business, any money that comes in as a result is welcome and it all adds up.

So let me ask you again: if you had the opportunity to make $750 dollars each money for doing pretty much nothing, would you do it?

Well, think of it this way – perhaps it’s not a question of “would you do it?” but rather, “should you do it?”

I think that the question of whether or not you should do a thing is of primary importance, especially when you want to keep your dealings ethical, honest, value-driven and always in the interests of your readership, subscribers, customers, etc.

The Offer

So by now you’re dying to know just what it was that I turned down, right? Okay, I shall tell you….

Basically I received an e-mail in my inbox. Now, I receive lots of e-mails, too many more often than not. I’m sure that you can relate to this. This one caught my eye though as it wasn’t just a generic spam type e-mail. Rather, it had been submitted via the contact form here on my blog.

Something I remember being told a while back when I first started was that once you start to become established in the blogging arena and you begin to get known, you will start having people contact you about various things, such as joint ventures, guest posts, advertising and so forth.

This particular e-mail was with regards to advertising. The person explained that they were from a consulting company and basically I was being asked if I would be willing to rent out some space on my blog for banner adverts. They said that their budget varied between US $450-$750/month, depending on the size of the ad.

“Heck, yes!” Stick your biggest ad on here and I’ll take $750 per month, thank you very much!” This was my thought for about, oh, maybe half a second.

But I’ve been around for a bit now. As attractive an offer as it may have seemed, the kill switch in my head tripped. In fact, the words of my mentor, Dean Holland, came to mind:

“Always do your due diligence.”

Now in all honesty, I had already decided against accepting the offer by this point for another reason that I shall explain in a moment. But in doing my due diligence I decided to look up the company’s website and Google the name of the person and their e-mail address.

Sure enough, the same offer had been made to other people, word for word. The general concensus is that it’s not a genuine offer and it was simply a spam/scam type of e-mail. Whether or not this is the case for sure, I don’t know. If I was someone like John Chow who is very well known in the industry, who has a very active blog and is know for renting out ad space, then I could understand my getting an offer such as that. But to receive an out-of-the-blue offer without so much as an enquiry into my traffic stats makes me feel that it was, indeed, a spam/scam message.

I STILL Wouldn’t Have Accepted It!

Be honest – this is what you really wanna know, right? 😉

If the offer had definitely been genuine, just why the heck would I have turned down up to $750 per month for just having an ad on my website? Well, my friend, I shall tell you…

Firstly, I just want to clarify something – there’s absolutely nothing wrong with having banner ads. After all, I use them myself. At the end of the day, we all want people to click on our ads and subscribe to our lists so that ultimately we’ll make money. That’s the whole point of having on an online business. But however we choose to do it, it should be done correctly and for the right reasons.

There are those who are happy to rent out space on their blogs and have ads on there for which they receive payment in return. If that’s part of your business model and it fits you and your target audience then there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that.

However, it’s not for me.

Yes I utilise ads and yes, on occasion, I will make special promotions. But these things are only ever things that completely fit in with my blog, that I 100% endorse and that I believe will be of benefit to my visitors and subscribers. Anyone who has known me for a while or who has subscribed to my list will know that this is true of me.

So even if the offer had been genuine (and the same applies to any offer), I’d rather have a small number of personally vetted ads that I stand behind rather than rent out space just for the sake of making money.

You see, as with all things with our businesses, you must look to the long term. I value each and every one of you who takes the time to visit my site, read my stuff, leave a comment, subscribe to my list and click on any links/ads that I have. To me, that is worth far, far more in the grand scheme of things. For me, I feel that to open up my blog to ad space rental isn’t in line with the direction I want it to go. As I said earlier, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that approach and I know that many people do so quite successfully.

But it’s just not for me and, by extension, it’s not for you as my visitors.

So there you have it. That’s why I rejected the chance of making $750 per month for doing practically nothing. And if the same type of offer comes along again and I can be 100% sure that it’s genuine, I’ll still reject it. But that’s just me.

How about you?

Are there any things that you have been tempted to do but have decided against for the sake of your blog or business?

Or perhaps you have been tempted to do something, chosen to go with it, but later regretted it?

Please let me know in the comments section below!

Churn and Burn Blogging

Just what is churn and burn blogging? Does it even work? These are questions that I’ll be addressing in next week’s post. I look forward to seeing you then.

Until next week!