Monetizing the blog

If you read yesterday's post you know that I offered a link to a book I recommended in the post.  As I said in the post, if anyone clicks on that link and purchases the book I will receive a small affiliate commission.  I've never made a dime from writing this blog.  It has been done because I love smaller churches and the people who lead them, and I wanted to encourage and resource them in any way I can.  However, after reading Hyatt's book I realized that there would be nothing wrong with offering resources and collecting a small fee for doing so.  Actually, most of the blogs I read have a great deal of advertising on them.  Not only do they have affiliate links but many sell advertising space on the blogs as well.  The question for me was how could I do that and not feel I was taking advantage of the people who read my blog.

One of the things I realized is that I occasionally recommended books and other items in the blog anyway.  The readers would decide whether or not they would purchase those items.  If they were interested in a particular item then my providing a link to that item was a convenience to them.  You can click on the link, find out more information about the item, and then make a decision about purchasing it.  You won't pay any more for the item if you click on my link than if you went directly to Amazon and purchased it (if you find out that is not the case, please let me know).

The other thing I committed to is that I will not provide a link to something that I have not used or read and feel comfortable recommending it to others.  In other words, I'm not going to link to a bunch of stuff just in hopes of earning commissions.  The commission isn't that much, and even if it was I would not do that to my readers.

I hope you see that I gave this a great deal of thought before deciding to offer a link to products on the blog.  I pray my decision to do so will not offend anyone.  I wanted to use my post today to be upfront about what I am doing.  My desire for this blog continues to be to provide resources and encouragement to my readers, and that will continue to be the driving force behind everything I do.