adfreeblog1.jpg

Over the past few years since this blog’s inception, we have rebuffed offers to incorporate or merge with other sites, take on corporate sponsorship, charge for advertising using banners or text ads, or charge money to manufacturers for the service we provide.

Suffice to say, those things simply are not going to happen. While we’d someday like this blog to do something that makes money (sell T-shirts with our logo for example) to support the meager cost of updates and design issues, we don’t ever envision that our entrepreneurial desire will ever overtake the desire to continue this blog with a sense of earnestness, integrity, and fairness. As such, we now proudly feature the logo you see here which is now proudly displayed on our sidebar.

By adding this logo, we operate under these premises:

1. That we are opposed to the use of corporate advertising on blogs.

2. That we feel the use of corporate advertising on blogs devalues the medium.

3. That we do not accept money in return for advertising space on our blog.

Furthermore, we’d like to quote the author of the Ad Free Blog site by posting his comments on this issue, which echo our own sentiments:

Why do you care? Can’t you just ignore the ads? I have ads on my blog but it doesn’t affect what I write.

Many bloggers say they will not let the ads affect the editorial content. I question this statement. Can you guarantee that? And knowing that other people are offered money to “mention” a product on their site don’t you start to wonder whether someone is recommending something in an unbiased way? We live in a culture where advertisers directly influence and in some cases control and create the culture at large. Honesty of the writing is affected when corporate interests are paying the bills. This has been proven time and time again in the case of periodicals, films, and television. The more ads that appear on blogs the less we will all trust in honesty of the medium as a whole.

The byproduct of this is that blogging medium (as with many/most others forms of media in our culture, magazines, news, film, etc.) is now *influenced/controlled* by large corporations. If you don’t know why this is a problem I highly recommend the film “the corporation,” which explains in a succinct way why most large corporations have no accountability, and are only about the bottom line throwing public welfare and the health of the planet to the wayside.

We, and the writers who take their time to participate with this blog, do so because they love doing so and not because of any promise of financial gain. We will strive to continue this for as long as this blog is in existence.

You may now resume your regularly scheduled blogging….

  • Share/Bookmark