I was reading a blog post the other day about online begging-(sorry I don’t remember which one). It was about a man that was begging for the new Hasselblad digital camera-which cost about 40,000 dollars. The blogger talking about this bit of chutzpah didn’t seem outraged that this fellow was cyber begging, but that he was cyber begging for so much. She herself is trying to sell Cafe Press items in order to raise money for a new camera. But Cafe Press is a little bit different from out and out begging.
I have read other bloggers that think any kind of begging, be it in the form of a Buy Me A Coffee button or a Please Donate button or whatever, is a bad thing. Gives a bad impression-begging should only be used by people that are at the end of their rope not people that just want a new toy. Some seem to think that it makes your blog look less professional, which assumes that you have a professional persona to preserve. I think a Buy Me button would be right at home on a blog that features pictures of pretty women or one that covers just about any sport.
I keep changing my mind on this-I think yeah, beg for whatever you want-doesn’t mean anyone will give it to you. On the other hand, there are ways to earn money on a blog without begging for it. Not that it would be easy to make 40,000 dollars from Adsense. I don’t think it will be easy to get people to just give you forty thousand dollars either.
But then-I was watching the Today Show the other morning, and there was a guy traveling the world-by begging for people to send him money and asking them to tell him where they want him to go. Then there is that whole barter thing like One Red Paper Clip, where this guy traded his way from a paperclip to a house. Bartering isn’t begging, is it?
I’m a pretty good portrait photographer, if anyone wants to trade a trip to Paris for a couple of 8x10s. . .
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Nice post. I’m giving begging a try but asking for $350,000 to escape my cubicle life and do some blue collar work instead. It is not often that you meet someone who has had enough of sitting around making big bucks doing nothing behind a computer that wants to hammer nails.
http://www.meandmybox.com
Interesting idea-there is every possibility that it will work. After all that yutz sold his life on eBay and got tons of free publicity while he was doing it.