Losing Weight in the City: Now 100% Ad-Free

There’s been an item that keeps getting pushed down to the bottom of my to-do list:

• Call unemployment.

I filed for it ASAP online, but I knew I had to call and see what the deal was with freelancing and blogging. I’d heard that a day of blogging was considered “work” by the state of NY if you’re paid for it, but I had to hear it on my own before I made any financial decisions. Sure enough, you can’t blog everyday on a blog with ads and also collect unemployment. I’d thought that I could subtract my blogging income from the unemployment income, but that wasn’t the case.

I first put ads on my blog in April 2010. I’d applied to Foodbuzz before and been rejected, but they finally accepted my application in April 2010. I was so excited! I would get paid for something I loved that I was doing anyway. Part of the reason I started my blog was as a professional outlet–to prove my social media and writing skills–so I was always focused on trying to improve it and take it to the next level anyway. It was just an added bonus that I’d get paid for it.

Having always worked in publishing, I’d never really experienced a correlation between how hard I worked and how much I got paid, aside from small salary bumps as I moved up and around. But with blogging, I found that the more hard work I put in, the more successful my blog was–more people read it and I began making a bit more money. Something that was already incredibly fulfilling on a personal level was beginning to be slightly fulfilling on a financial level. But nothing I can live on and certainly less than unemployment, so I had to take my ads down today.  

My Foodbuzz account is on hold until I get a job again, and my web guys were awesome about helping me get the ads down right away.

So what does this mean for you as a reader?

Honestly, not much. While I loved seeing my hard work pay off (and sure, sometimes that’s posting more), I try not to blog unless I really have something to say. I don’t see what I blog or how often I blog changing as a result of this.

However! I now have all kinds of free space in my sidebar. So! If you have some sort of button–either for some sort of charitable cause you’re involved with or just for your blog–that you’d like me to post, send me an e-mail (theodora@losingweightinthecity.com) about why I should put your button in my sidebar, and I’ll pick a few to put up there.