I’ve seen several blog posts that state that paid blogging devalues blogging and bloggers. My question is why?

Yes, blogging is a hobby. But people have made it a business as well. You can make pretty much any hobby a business. Some people have made cross stitching or crocheting or knitting their business, and it doesn’t devalue other stitchers/crocheters/knitters, so how it is that being a paid blogger devalues bloggers? That really doesn’t make sense to me.

A blog is a website just like any other website. The owner of said website has the right to make money from it just like they would have the right to make money off any other type of website they put up. So why is blogging such a different animal? What makes it so special that bloggers can’t make money from their hobby like other hobbyists do?

I’ve seen arguments that people don’t believe it when you review a product and say you weren’t paid for it. That’s their problem. The only person who needs to know or care that it wasn’t a paid review is you. Period. Let others think what they want to about what you said. Bottom line, paid or not, if the reader is interested in the product, they’ll check it out. End of story. So why the big deal about paid blogging?

To my idea, paid blogging is just like getting paid to do anything else that you consider a hobby. It’s a nice little bit of extra income and when it stops, it stops. Oh well, big deal.

I have too many places. On the web that is. I have 2 myspace accounts, one for me personally and one for Gothic-Peach.Net, I have a Kaneva account (Love Kaneva), a Gather account, a VampireFreaks account, a Facebook account, a Vox blog. a LiveJournal, and a zillion other blogs. I have too many web places. Sheesh. No wonder most of them are neglected. I’m juggling more websites than most paid webmasters. LOL

Disclosure: I purchased this book with my own money. I have no connection with this book’s publisher or author in any way. No compensation was received for this review.

I’m a vampire book lover. So when I discovered the Anita Blake Vampire Hunter series, I decided to give it a whirl. Mind you, I own 3 of the books but had only read a portion of one. So I sat down this month and read Guilty Pleasures (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter: Book 1). I have to say so far I like it. There isn’t as much sex or reference to sex so far as there is in her Meredith Gentry series, but that hasn’t detracted me from wishing to read more of the series.

I personally liked this book, liked the way Anita handled herself. When you first read Vampire Hunter, you automatically think of bits of fluff like Buffy who get tough for a few seconds and then return to being a fluff ball a few minutes later, and who would get along great with the teenybopper crowd. That is definitely not what this book is all about. It’s adult oriented and a great read.

I give this one 3 of 5 stars.

Disclosure: I purchased this book with my own money. I have no connection with this book’s publisher or author in any way. No compensation was received for this review.

I finished Perfect Nightmare: A Novel by John Saul about a week ago. It was an excellent read, as are the majority of John Saul’s offerings. I’m not sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever read a bad book by this man.

Perfect Nightmare involves what is every parent’s perfect nightmare – the abduction of their child. Couple this with the fact that in the midst of all this the parents were attempting to sell their home and move to a new city, and you have what can only be described as an absolute nightmare. The book takes more twists and turns and I actually didn’t figure out who was doing the kidnapping until the very end of the book.

This one was a real page turner and I am so glad that I read it. I give it 4 of 5 stars.

I haven’t done so well on this blog with the Blog 365 thing, but I have on my main blog, Gothic Peach. I guess I should give up on this blog but I don’t want to. LOL