Dear Bloggers

Apparently it's a trend to make money from your blog. I get it - completely. I get that it's extra money and for some their only income. I am totally fine with that idea. I think it's great for you to have enough followers that you can warrant advertising space on your blog. I also love that you write at least one article a year on how to have a successful blog, and tell us all how to have your success.
As a blog reader I have a few thoughts on this though. When every post of a crafting blog is an advertisement or a give away and you are no longer posting about crafts you have lost your focus. It drives the reader NUTS! There are plenty of places I can get ads thrown at me all the time. Hint - if you are having to post an advertisement post daily to keep up with your contracts you've over committed your blog. You need to raise your rates and decrease the number of advertisers. Yes - I am saying you are too cheep. Sell yourself! Work smarter and not harder. Also - your readers can tell when you're reviewing a product you haven't used or have no faith in. It's been happening a lot to blogs that post a lot of ads. I think it's just that they don't have enough time to research the product before having to write on it.
How do you know if you're one of the bloggers I'm talking about? It's a math thing. It's all about proportions. What proportion of your blog do you at to be about crafts and what proportion do you want to be about ads. News papers and magazines have had this figured out for a long time. They know exactly the ratio of ads to article they can get away with before readers start to drop. Then you also need to consider how many personal stories you can get away with in a craft / business blog. My personal preference is that if you advertise as a craft blog then AT LEAST 50% of your posts should be about crafts.
When I'm picking a blog to read I look at the last 10 posts. If most of them are how to's or crafts I'll probably subscribe for a while. If most of them are reviews or ads I probably won't subscribe. I was starting to get concerned that I would have to relinquish my ideals as following got larger on the blog, so I started looking at stats through Google Reader. What I found is that larger followings have mainly posts about their stated purpose with an occasional ad / review type post. One blog I looked at just this morning had over 16,000 followers and in the past 10 posts only 1 advertisement post. That post was carefully written with personal experience about the product. It is possible to make money from your blog while maintaining focus. I'm begging you to do this or I'll have to drop you. Thank you - concerned blog reader.