Today, I want to pull away from my usual topics and talk meta.
I started this blog in 2010, during the early-ish heydays of personal style blogging. Monetization was only just beginning to gain momentum, and sponsored posts were still a relative rarity. Almost from the beginning, I realized that blogging would not be a path to fame or fortune for me. As a former teenage wallflower, popularity was a tempting prospect, but it quickly became apparent that I did not have the temperament to pursue it in any meaningful way. Chalk it up to my internal push-and-pull of wanting to please people but also keep them at arm’s length and “do my own thing”. I am also not a natural salesperson; goodbye, sweet sponsorship money! I always feel responsible when people act on my recommendations – which is unreasonable but it is what it is – and I knew that adding financial incentives into the mix would only exacerbate that sense of responsibility. I don’t want to feel guilty if you buy a skirt and you end up hating it! So making the choice not to monetize – either through sponsorships or affiliate linking – was relatively easy. It is also worth mentioning that I was fortunate to have a day job that provided financial security, so I did not face other pressures or inducements to monetize in that fashion.
In the intervening years, the landscape of social media has changed tremendously. Blogging started to decline, and influencers were born. Side hustle culture became mainstream. While it seems like there is fatigue with traditional influencer monetization – i.e. sponsored ads and the like – monetization isn’t going anywhere.
I have never regretted not taking advantage of the sponsorship and blog monetization opportunities I’ve been offered over the years (or not trying to pursue others). My feelings about being a salesperson haven’t changed. I gave up chasing social media popularity entirely by making my main Instagram account private. To be perfectly honest, I thought I was “outside of it all” – immune to the lure of monetization, so to speak.
Turns out, maybe I wasn’t.
Because while I didn’t monetize this space or my fashion blogging social media presence, I did monetize other parts of my life. I sell my art, even though I cannot price it in a manner that is truly reflective of the effort and skill that goes into it. I’ve talked about this before, but a big reason for that was the need to “legitimize” my art. I also, for a time, monetized my thrifting hobby by offering personal shopping packages. Why? Probably because I internalized that ubiquitous message that turning hobbies into side hustles is The Very Best Idea Ever. I was recently listening to an episode of the podcast Money Feels, in which the co-hosts (Bridget Casey and Alyssa Davies) made a very thought-provoking point: the push towards side hustles is a symptom of the financial insecurity which our capitalist system instills in people. That insecurity is very real for many people — caught up in the gig economy, low wage work, crippling student or medical debt, and so on — but it can also be a state of mind. The constant preoccupation with accumulation lest one fall behind or run out. In a way, this fear isn’t entirely unfounded either; most of us are a series of unfortunate incidents away from financial crisis in a society where social safety nets are shrinking by the day. [You know how it’s said that some people act like they are “temporarily impoverished millionaires”? It might be better if we all acted (and voted!) like “temporarily well-off paupers”. But now I am really digressing.]
In my case, while I am not suffering actual financial instability, I am still, clearly, prey to the scarcity mindset. Nowadays, I am trying to be more alert to that and its impacts on my decision-making — not only in relation to monetization of hobbies, but in general. As for my personal thrift shopping services? I stopped those a few years ago; the work stopped being fun and started being a source of stress almost as soon as I monetized it. I am also re-evaluating my feelings around being a “legitimate” artist and the role of monetization in my experience as an artist, but that remains a work in progress.
There is one thing which has brought this all back onto my front burner recently. Everywhere I turn these days, it seems like people are offering Patreons, subscriptions, Substack newsletters. They are not selling material things, or at least, that isn’t the primary draw (some may still use affiliate links in their paid content). They are selling content or, depending on how you look at it, creative product — not different from a song, or a piece of art. I am not going to lie, there is an appeal in this for me. Why? I guess at least part of the appeal goes back to that idea of legitimacy; if someone is willing to pay for it, your content must be worthy. However, put another way: if someone is reading your content, it must be worth something, no?
I keep coming back to this question. Is my content worth something? If I am writing because I enjoy it, does that negate the significance of being paid for it? Does reaching a (presumably) wider audience compensate for the lack of other recompense? Where content is personal in nature — opinion writing, if you will — does monetization mean selling access? How do I feel about that? Over the years, my writing has enabled me to connect with and develop friendships with people whom I would not otherwise have met; how does one bring money into something like that? At the same time, the majority of people who consume my content do so anonymously and without any reciprocity which, at times, I have to admit, does sting a little.
This is where I have to tell you that I don’t have a neat conclusion to this post. All I know is that I keep seeing new subscription notices — not the first and not the last tool of its kind, for monetization is a many-headed Hydra in our world — and wondering where I fit into this paradigm. Maybe this is just another facet (head?) of the monetization culture that I need to come to grips with. If anything, I’ve realized that there isn’t a “one answer fits all” solution to the questions posed by monetization culture. And this isn’t a long-winded way of telling you that I’m putting the blog behind a paywall, by the way. But if there is a takeaway, it’s that monetization as an extension of capitalist ideology is pervasive and tends to sneak into all corners of life where you might least expect it, and calls for constant (re)examination.
I would love to hear your thoughts, whether as content creator, content consumer, both, or just as a person living through these late stage capitalism end times. Have you grappled with the question “to monetize or not to monetize”? Have you jumped all in, or opted all out, or found some kind of balance (and if so, definitely share the secret sauce!)?
