Wednesday, September 30, 2009

of Profit Motive



"Monetize"

Q:Why did the entreprenuer start a blog?
A: There was money to be made in advertisments...

Ingenuity on Google's part, offering the option for bloggers to earn revenue by giving consent to having spam posted on the sidebars and under posts. The more clicks someone recieves, the more money they earn from the advertizers.

It is at this crossroads between selling-out and staying true to my "individually mass-produced" blogger's roots. Do I hinder my reader's progression through my blog by allowing you to be assaulted with advertisments for my own good, advertisments I myself cannot click on to earn my revenue, as stated in the terms of the Ad-sense contract, or do I leave you with the false sense of genuinity in the fact that I myself am not allowing such shameless commercialism (despite the fact that I am piggybacking on a company whose individual share price has hovered around $500 the past few years)?

Today my blog is not monetized. Nor will it be tomorrow. Or the next day. But if the future gives me an opportunity to allow Ad-Sense to decorate my blog then I humbly ask, for Revenue's sake, click on my ads, please. For without you, my most beloved readers, not only is this page a waste of unviewed translated HTML, but also a lack of profitable venture for myself.

In the meantime I'll be subconciously weighing the marginal benefits and marginal costs of Monetizing every time I add a new post, and am tempting with the "Monetize" tab, and I hope you look upon me with economist's eyes and an over-active mouse finger if ever on my blog you are faced with the option to:


"CLICK HERE!"

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

of Embarrassment.


Whether the venue be a classroom, a forum, or a sporting event, embarrassment is nearly always the greatest separator of the talented and the lame. When faced with a moment of embarrassment such as the announcement of a poor test performance before a room full of peers and classmates or a defender's ankles being ''broken'' on the court; the recipient of such mortification is presented with two options: improve of refrain.

Obviously improvement is not possible for everyone all the time, for example, at six feet in height, I am unlikely to improve my abilities as a jockey to any semblance of respectability, but if I study the required material for Spanish class more than I currently have been, it is likely that I will improve my proficiency in the use of such substance, at least to a point so to improve my grade if no level of fluency is achieved.

Choosing one option of handling self-conscioussness over the other is a matter of personal choice that if chosen incorrectly could result in further embarrassment. To re-use the previous examples, if I were stubborn and chose to stick with my hobby of jockeying despite having never sat in a saddle in my life, I would most likely exhibit an ineptitude unparalleled in any field of jockeys, and if I choose to tranfser out of my fourth year of Spanish class, which my skills have earned me membership to Sociedad Honoraria Hispanica (Spanish Honors Society), because of one publicly-announced poor quiz grade in favor of an entirely new language of different origins, it is safe to say that I would incur some difficulty in honing the expertise needed to speak this entirely new idiom. Personally, I would rather spend a few more moments each evening studying "prefijos y sufijos" than striving toward greatness at Chuchill Downs.

Through the experimentation of various interests and abilities, especially in front of others, one can learn firsthand the Infallibilty of Embarrassment.