Purist Ramblings: The Giant Elephant Banner In The Room!

Let me be honest first, I really don't want to have this conversation.  I really dread bringing up anything besides the cool, exciting, or sometimes controversial stuffs with the keshi community.  I never think any of the background things, whether that's complaining about being busy with work or not getting enough views, has any place here.  So, don't take this as a rant or a conventional article, but me asking you guys how you feel.  I am essentially asking for advice.

I think everyone would love to have their hobby support itself.  In other words, people who play a lot of video games would love to play professionally, get their games for free, and maybe have it support their lifestyle.  People who spend a lot of time painting or taking photographs would love to sell their work to their fans so they can continue to buy supplies and equipment.  I think this comparison could be in just about anything, and regardless, when money is brought up, and particularly when a value of it is brought up, things get awkward.

I suppose that's why I never wanted to bring it up to begin with.  Many people have done it before me and in many times it goes less than perfectly.  People shout out about Internet Begging and all that, and things spiral out of control in a giant flame war.  All that stuff I would rather just not be a part of.

The honest thing about it all is that I love Keshi Drop to support itself.  Now I know it's a free blog and anyone can have one and start rambling nonsensically.  Heck, that's me, but I've had a lot of great luck and experiences with Keshi Drop so far and I want to grow it out more.  I want it bigger and more interesting.  I want to maybe even bridge out to videos and audio podcasts eventually.  I want to visit all the conventions and events and bring back the harsh, crazy, critiques back here.

I am very thankful for what Keshi Drop has given me so far.  It's not that I am ungrateful and desire more.  It's that I feel I owe Keshi Drop and the keshi community more, and I want to do more.  I have the plans to do more and the drive to do more, but just not the lifestyle that'll allow me to do more than what I can with a free blog account.

So, it feels a lot of the time it's at an impasse, with either two distinct routes with different outcomes.  The first is I stop worrying about it and only do what I can.  I keep the blog up with as many updates as I can do, but growth will depend on any wild influxes of income that'll pop in, in my personal life, like a tax return or something like that.  I take the opportunity then to expand and see where that takes me.  Or, I cave to the elephant in the room and look at advertisements and the like, see what I can generate there, and expand accordingly to what the net drags in.

Boy, I hate advertisements.  I use Ad Block on all my browsers and I really don't feel that bad about it.  I know some sites and videos make their money from people clicking banners and watching videos, but the forms of advertisement they use are intrusive, awful, and more often than not risky.  I feel if advertisers had any idea how to sell a product without making someone want to punch their monitor, I might not resort to block every part of their business away from me.  But with giant pop-up ads, auto-playing audio, and embedded unskippable commercials in videos, it feel like they have no intention of making things a little more palatable.

I think the best source of monetary support would be from sponsors and donors.  I would certainly prefer to have the ability to pick and choose sponsors and partners, but I feel Keshi Drop just isn't that big yet.  I'm not sure any deal with Keshi Drop would be advantageous for any company looking to pull in new customers.  I'm not sure I would produce the numbers they'd expect, and the numbers I would produce are strictly from one niche toy collecting sub-category.  

So, really, I leave the question up to you guys.  What do you all think?  Do you think I should try the Google Ad Sense route?  I really have been holding out from it for a while now, but I am beginning to wonder if that could be the answer to the expansion I want to do in the near future.  Let me know below!  Thanks again for reading this.  At least now we have addressed the elephant in the room and now we can go back to keshi stuffs!  Yay!