I look at a heck of a lot of websites, and one thing that always annoys me is when a webmaster is a bit too forward or aggressive in either asking for donations or paid subscriptions.

Okay, some of these sites are being written by pros: journalists, writers, academics, etc. and they can really write, and they churn out good long form posts day in and day out.  Stuff you normally only get in books or magazines, so I have no problem with them asking that you tip or pay to subscribe.

What I’m talking about are just Joe or Jane bloggers, prodigious or not, got their hand out for money.  I mean some of these blogs don’t have shit for content and they already have a collection plate out.  An About page and two posts is not content, so put the buy me coffee link away.

And I guess I’m not talking about a fairly substantial blogger that has a discreet tip jar, but I am talking about webmasters that have noisy big ads and pop-ups everywhere about paying them something.  And again, it depends upon what you are writing about: tech information you can’t find elsewhere my be well worth a tip or two.

Look, if you are constantly busking for money first that means your site is commercial.  A commercial site is a different standard than a personal homepage.  If you are banging that tin cup it means you better have content well beyond, “I went to Aldi today…”  Honey, I’ve seen many thousands of websites and chances are, yours isn’t that good.

Again, it’s all a matter of degree, if you have to put a tip jar up, be classy about it.

You can have a website without any commercial goal.  Somehow, way to many of us have bought into the ideology that the Web is only about making money, which is complete and utter bunk.  If you are in it for the money, get out of the gray area and go pro.

/rant

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