Today, I had the pleasure of meeting Daringyoungmom and Goodisenough, two fellow lady bloggers who will be going to Blogher this year.

DYM is a well-known blogger (who’s speaking at the conference on Day One about the need for an intolerance intervention in the blogosphere).

At the playground, we got to talking about blogging for money. As you know, this is an issue that I’ve been been struggling with of late. Essentially, both DYM and GIE disagree with directly sponsored posts from companies like Payperpost. And after I told them how I gave PPP the boot after finding out its business model of rejecting posts even after the posts have been published for weeks, they were even more aghast.

FYI, DYM has a thriving business running ads on her blog from Blogher (which I’ve just applied for!) and she’s made quite a name for herself in the American blogosphere after just two years. She’s been on the Today show and even writes for a parenting site, The Parenting Post.

So the contention here is, which is the lesser of the two evils? Monetising your blog through ads, or writing paid posts? Of course, people who do both would not be asking this question as they HAVE NO SOULS (points at me).

Having gone through a little over two weeks of PPP, I am now only on SponsoredReviews, of which there have been bids few and far between. While the money’s good, what one of the moms said this morning - I don’t remember who - struck me as very true: That after a while, the readability of your blog degrades because your readers stop reading the real posts as well.

And after a while, even the quality of your READERS degrade, because no matter how well you write, your quality blog readers, those who really come to you for your stories and anecdotes, your honest reviews, don’t read paid posts. Sadly, it’s already happening. Traffic has gone down about 30% for me since I’ve gone all money-minded. Of course, if you don’t care about that sort of thing, it doesn’t really matter since neither PPP nor SR lists ‘quality of readers’ (nor quantity, which is odd) as one of the requirements to be paid.

After an afternoon spent pondering this whole messed up issue, I’ve decided to stop bidding from today onwards at SR, and to commit what I’ve bid on, if they are accepted. I am going to stick with the ads and hope that my attendance at Blogher (and acceptance into their ad program) will help me gain some exposure as a writer and to pursue, instead, alternate - and more ‘honourable’ - ways to earn some money.

Wish me luck. Sorry to make all of you a part of my whole monetising my blog rollercoaster. If only I wasn’t so damn fickle…