Ding 100,000

In February 2004 I added a Sitemeter counter
to this site, to find out if anybody was actually reading my blog. Today this counter hit 100,000 visitors, which is a lot more than I would have ever imagined. Time to celebrate, pop the champagne!

With economics being my second hobby after gaming, I obviously asked myself what my blog is "worth", in the post-dotcom era. Admoolah is telling me that a blog like mine could bring about $2.86 per 1,000 page views when using Google's AdSense. Sitemeter tells me that my 100,000 visitors had 125,000 page views (so not many people get past the front page). So I theoretically could have earned $357 dollars in the last two years from my blogging. Fortunately I have a Real Life ® job in which I earn more than that in two *days*. So I'm still not going to put advertising on my blog. Ask me again when I get 100,000 visitors per month, and I might be tempted. :)

It is not that I am against advertising or earning money. The problem is rather that Google's AdSense would see me writing about WoW and MMORPGs, and promptly plaster my site with ads for WoW gold, powerleveling services, and "inofficial guides". I'm neither really for nor against buying WoW gold, but wouldn't want to promote it. I find powerleveling services stupid (what's next? I pay somebody to watch TV for me?). And most "inoffical guides" are primitive scams where you are sold information you could have gotten for free from a number of gaming sites. Add it all up and AdSense would get me to a point where I earn money only when my readers are being lazy or stupid. As I'm assuming, based on the quality of their comments, that my readers are rather intelligent, the earnings would probably be lower than what Admoolah predicts anyway. If I were blogging about something different, like model railroads or so, and the ads would direct my readers to local hobby shops, I'd probably be willing to run AdSense. But with the "secondary market" for the MMORPG hobby being decidedly seedy, I think I'm better of without advertising on my blog. What do you think?