Nope.
So I noticed that you occasionally mention products in your posts–most recently the kitchen-aid immersion blender. I’ve also been reading about word-of-mouth marketing campaigns where bloggers and people are paid to talk up products as if they’re the coolest shit in the world. Are you getting paid for this?
Wait—bloggers and people getting paid? Bloggers aren’t people? It’s not like when I started writing this I gave up my humanity.
But, no, I’m not getting paid for any of this. No money exchanges hands for Corduroy Orange, unless you count the money I pay to my web hosting company. I mention products because I like them and I think they’re useful.
My brother’s been suggesting that I sell some ad space on the page, but I’m not sold on that idea. I can’t even stand at a urinal anymore without having an ad in my face, and I like the idea of having ad-free space.
I suppose if in some lapse of judgement a company offered me money to promote their product and it were a product that I used and liked, I would agree to the arrangement (and disclose it); but I don’t see that happening anytime soon, especially because I’m more apt to encourage people to buy less and reuse what they already have instead of running out to grab more junk that they don’t really need. Not to mention that I hardly have the name recognition advertisers seek when they dole out sponsorship dollars.
Still, though, I see some people hawking their things on TV and I have no idea who they are: like that guy who’s been promoting his new menu items at Applebee’s—I’d never seen him before his mug showed up on that ad. And that’s hardly a great first impression: the guy who schleps his stuff for a national chain with so few distinguishing characteristics that it could be any one of several similarly blah establishments. I suppose he’s getting paid pretty well for it, but I’ve got a tough time taking anyone seriously as a “celebrity chef” who obviously has no integrity about the source of their ingredients or the quality of their product.
So, to make a short story long, I don’t really have interest in pursuing advertising dollars. I’d much rather be well connected to the sources of food near me; to know the farmers and where my food comes from; and to encourage others to do the same. I’d much rather see the national conglomomarket fade and be replaced with many overlapping local networks of people connected to the land around them, the natural flux of seasons, and the way food ought to be grown and raised.