Thoughts on Advertising

As you may know, I recently opened up advertising on Streets & Stripes. It's the first time I've ever run an ad on S&S and I had quite a few hesitations about it at first. So if you don't mind, I'd like to talk about it! Let's make this a dialogue; please leave your thoughts in the comments!

I've been reading blogs for years.  And I hate that awkward moment when your favorite blog sudden breaks into advertising and it creates a shift in the relationship and in the dynamic of that blog. I didn't want that to happen here.  Not here, not on Streets and Stripes.

The more and more I thought about it, the more and more I became confused. So I started to look at advertising / partnerships / sponsors / whatever you'd like to call it, as a way to fund what I do here on Streets & Stripes. The days are only getting busier and the dreams for S&S are only getting bigger. And for me to keep my full time "regular job", still do freelance photography, and do this blog to the level I want to do it, I was going to have to start accepting advertisers.

American Apparel approached me about placing an ad on S&S right around the time I opened up advertising. It was also right at that time when I donated 90% of my wardrobe and was looking for a fresh start, a clean slate. I thought it might be a good way for me to jumpstart this project of building a new wardrobe since AA has some wonderfully made, high quality, and simple basics. I was also looking for something a bit more edgy, and they fit the bill.

Basically the ad works like this. If anyone clicks through the ad and purchases something, a portion of the sale goes to the website the ad is hosted on. I'm looking at it as a way to fund what it takes to run a blog.  And this is just some of my costs are running Streets & Strieps: domain hosting, image hosting, external hard drive for photos, traveling costs, laptop maintenance, photography equipment, keeping my wardrobe current .. and the biggest one of all is the time investment. I want to keep doing what I'm doing and this is one of the ways I can think of to accomplish just that.

So what do you think and how do you feel about advertising here on Streetsandstripes.com? Or on blogs in general?