IWSG: Selling Out

It's the first Wednesday of the month, and time for members of the Insecure Writer's Support Group to share their writerly insecurities. The group was started by Alex J. Cavanaugh, and those interested in joining in can visit www.insecurewriterssupportgroup.com for more information.

Today, I would like to touch upon a topic I've found myself thinking about from time to time. I was having a discussion with a coworker of mine the other day, about his blog which he'd been trying to monetize with Google AdSense. The blog in question is a celebrity gossip blog, and he has been running it, on and off, for more than a year. But for whatever reason, his application for AdSense keeps getting declined, with what appears to be a form-letter response triggered by Google's bots.

According to the form letter, the decline had something to do with Google's policies and standards, but the letter was rather vague and it failed to pinpoint exactly what area of their policy or standard that wasn't being adhered to.

Anyway, I also spoke to my coworker about my blog, and the fact that I have been maintaining it for close to 4 years now, during which time it has somehow managed to amass more than 1,250,000 views. I'm not quite sure if those numbers are below or above average, but my coworker seemed to see nothing but dollar signs at the mere mention. He asked why I hadn't tried to monetize my blog, before proceeding to lecture me about real-life stories of bloggers earning considerable money off their blogs.

I must confess that I have indeed considered placing ads on my blog prior to this discussion. But the thought has always left me feeling conflicted. I mean, the original purpose of this blog was to chronicle my journey as a writer, even though it seems that has been relegated to these monthy IWSG posts. So I guess what I am asking is would placing ads on my blog compromise my integrity as an artist or writer?