Through the good offices of Jimmy Tomatoes, I found out today that I am cashing in on BloodhoundBlog. How? By means of my membership in the Amazon Affiliates program, which pumps something less than twenty cents a day into our coffers.
I’ve talked about this before, but clearly mere talk is not enough. On top of everything else I’ll be doing this weekend, I’m going to de-Affiliate every Amazon link. It’s absurd to eliminate five bucks a month of inflow — money that mostly just accumulates at Amazon.com — especially considering that our web hosting plan runs to $75 a month. But I don’t want there ever to be even the hint of a possibility of an implication that BloodhoundBlog is compromised by pecuniary considerations.
For that same general reason, I decided this afternoon to pull out of the Blogger’s Connect events at this year’s Inman Connect in San Francisco. I have had qualms about this since the moment I said I would do it:
(As a matter of disclosure, I have been offered a complimentary ticket and hotel room to Inman Connect this summer. I’m scheduled to speak, so I can argue to myself that this is an honorarium, but that feels like a rationalization. At the same time, I do feel that Caesar’s Wife should be free from even the hint of a suspicion. Lucky me, I don’t have to decide what to do yet.)
Brad Inman and his staff have been nothing but decent to me, but I am not comfortable with the idea that there might even be a scintilla of doubt in someone’s mind about my independence, personally, or about the independence of BloodhoundBlog.
This is real life inside my skin: When Inman Connect rolled around in January, I took a little poke at it. No big deal, except I had just started posting as a guest blogger at the Inman Blog, a position I have since resigned. Some sleazoid insisted that I wouldn’t say the same thing in Inman’s salon. And that would have been, true, too — until he said it. Instead, I wrote an extended evisceration of all things trade show — at Inman Blog. I didn’t care if I got fired as a guest blogger, but I did care that anyone could even think that the fear of getting fired would serve to silence me. If you think I can argue about minutiae in the Agora, you should see the pitched battles that rage inside my mind.
It’s possible that I will make it to Blogger’s Connect, anyway. I do want to come, both to take in the event and to meet the meatspace components of the RE.net. But if I come, I’ll be coming on my own nickel. And, despite what you might have read, not one of those nickels will have come from Amazon.com.
Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing
Austin Realtor's Wife says:
SO we promote transparency in the real estate transaction and now in the blogosphere AND your personal-ish travel? Where the heck will it end? Just teasing!
Seriously though, you should still go (on your penny if you must) and you should stick to your guns and de-affiliate.
Viva Transparency!
May 11, 2007 — 8:16 pm
Trevor Smith says:
Greg – I often disagree with you… but I respect you for being independently minded and for standing up for what you believe in. I am actually kind of bummed, I am thinking about making my way down to blogger connect this year and I was (secretly):) excited to listen to/meet you.
Nonetheless – Cheers ~ You are a respectable man.
May 11, 2007 — 9:04 pm
Brian Brady says:
I’m disappointed that you won’t be presenting. I hope you do come, though.
May 11, 2007 — 10:13 pm
Kelly says:
I imagine this was a difficult decision for you. You did the right thing though if there was any question in your mind.
May 11, 2007 — 10:34 pm
Greg Tracy says:
Better to not fight yourself- you can’t win.
May 11, 2007 — 11:22 pm
Russell Shaw says:
20 cents a day X 365 days a year = $73 a year. Compound that for 40 years at 8% and you wind up with $1,585.89.
Don’t try and tell ME you didn’t know this – I want MY share, Greg Swann.
May 12, 2007 — 12:21 am
Reuben Moore says:
Greg – Well okay, you are taking the Consumer Reports model. And, I do get some solid, reliable information from that publication. But, I also get solid, reliable information from the Wall Street Journal, even with all it’s advertising.
Sure, sometimes I question the WSJ’s agenda. But I always question Consumer Reports….
May 12, 2007 — 6:12 am
CJ, Broker in L A, CA says:
Well, darn. I was seriously thinking about running up to Connect for one day – as a day trip – mainly for the purpose of seeing/hearing Greg Swann speak. Bummer!
But you have reminded me… I should go check how much ca$h is in my adsense account. I haven’t checked for ages. Many there’s enough to go to McDonalds ~and~ even buy a couple lottery tickets!!!
May 12, 2007 — 6:32 am
Jonathan Dalton says:
Actually, I just went the other way a couple of days ago and added the Amazon links. Purity of spirit is a noble goal and I commend you … but we’re not talking about a Nike swoosh on the Dead Sea Scrolls here.
I’m soooooooo sick of the idea that there’s only one way to write a real estate blog (a one way that differs from blogger to blogger.) If some feel you’re a loser because you don’t use AdSense, or if others feel you’re tainted because you do … screw both of them.
Do what works for you. End of story.
May 12, 2007 — 9:02 am
Sock Puppet says:
Who gives a crap about your amazon earnings? There’s no moral concern about amazon money, it’s not like they employ slave labor to pack and ship there stuff.
FFS Greg eat something high in Omega-3. This moral drama is all in your head.
May 12, 2007 — 9:16 am
David G says:
Greg,
In these matters it’s always best to go with your gut and I applaud your integrity and transparency. I do wonder though why you’re taking such a cautious approach. Mary was in fact holding your affiliate links up as a _good_ example. I don’t know enough to comment on the Inman blog experience but it didn’t impact my opinion of you – at least not negatively.
The conference is cut and dried. You are a speaker. There is a real cost to your business for you to attend. Inman is covering your partial expenses. Please show me the idiot who does not understand that it is appropriate for them to pay for this. If Brad arrives at your door with a basket of fruit, that’s obviously a different story.
You are invited to speak because of your success. In your case, a big part of that was earned on the back of intergrity and transparency — so I guess I can understand your caution — but I respectfully disagree with both decisions or at least their motives (the $5/month could probably be improved on).
May 12, 2007 — 9:52 am
Derek says:
Why do you care about what others think? Greg you seriously need to become a sports coach. By your second year of coaching, you will have developed an attitude where you could care less what others have to say or think about you, including the parents and kids themselves.
In the good spirit of disclosure, I’ll go public and say this…. I only pay $9.00 for my website all year around. That’s for the domain name. When I was around 11 or 12 years old, I got involved in a bunch of pyramid schemes. I made some good money. I also traded things like money and gold online. I ran a paid to read email site, had my own offshore turnkey casino and gosh knows I can’t remember what else I might have gotten myself involved in.
After I realized what I was getting myself into, I started looking for ways to get out. I came clean with my partners, we paid out a lot of money and since I still had some assets of my own left over, I traded what little I had for lifetime hosting.
Now will I promote sites like Amazon? Yes as it’s a book site and I am an author. A lot of my online friends are authors as well and I will promote their books as well as those of my own.
Where will the money go? Well I guess it would go to actually being able to purchase one of my friend’s books or paying the shipping costs of having them to send me a copy of it on their own – lol.
May 12, 2007 — 12:19 pm
Robbie says:
I am hoping you do attend Inman SF Connect. Regardless of what pocket the nickel comes out of. If for no other reason, the weather is much nicer in the Bay Area than Phoenix in early August. Besides, it’s cheaper to meet in the middle, than for you to fly to South Alaska.
Regarding disclosure, I think you should follow Scoble’s example. Just disclose everything and don’t care what other folks think about you. Other people will think what they want and as long you are honest in your dealing with them, you can sleep knowing you were true to yourself (regardless of the outcome). I think this random blog post summed up my thoughts best…
And, I for one, have never doubted your credibility. I may have questioned your preference for fruit computers perhaps, but never your credibility. 😉
May 12, 2007 — 3:35 pm
Matthew Hardy says:
Please continue to recommend books. Is making it easy to obtain them pettifogging? (You could always just give the money to the Please Everyone Fund.)
May 12, 2007 — 4:18 pm
Greg Swann says:
> Do what works for you.
I agree with this.
> There’s no moral concern about amazon money
Agreed. My concern is that I want for there never to be any doubt about why we recommend something.
> This moral drama is all in your head.
Probably.
> The conference is cut and dried. You are a speaker. There is a real cost to your business for you to attend. Inman is covering your partial expenses.
Not the right way, though. In fact, my participation would have been another instance of waxed fruit, a minor component of an incidental ornament on a sideboard. Even so, I didn’t want my reputation, and BHB’s, to lend credibility to things I don’t endorse. When I am confronted with an actual honorarium, I may have to rethink my position.
> If Brad arrives at your door with a basket of fruit, that’s obviously a different story.
We have a client who is a top executive with a huge pet food and supplies company. Cathy can’t mention a product we use without two cases of it showing up by UPS. The disclosures issues just pile up, don’t they?
> Why do you care about what others think?
I don’t. But weblogging is all about competition for reputation, and I care a great deal about BloodhoundBlog’s reputation.
> Please continue to recommend books.
Always. The links survive. I’ve just removed the affiliate references.
Here’s the thing: Different people see things differently. I have no objection to other people monetizing their weblogs. I don’t care if they get in bed with vendors, although I don’t trust webloggers who get in bed with vendors, and I really don’t trust webloggers who get in bed with vendors and don’t disclose it publicly. I don’t think participating in Blogger’s Connect is a cipher for getting in bed with Inman, but it started to feel to me that it could be interpreted that way — hence my withdrawal. We have built this weblog around the idea that we will say exactly what we think, damn the consequences, and I don’t want for anyone ever to have any doubts about our commitment to that kind of fierce and fearless independence. I would be the first to argue that I am probably overdoing things, but everything I do is about overdoing things.
May 12, 2007 — 5:43 pm
Stephen Nestel says:
If it were not for Inman News, I never would have learned about Bloodhound Blog and the healthy daily dialogue of all things real estate.
Trust your instincts. Keep up the “tell it like it is” approach to things. Your readers will tell you if you have wondered astray.
May 14, 2007 — 10:37 am