Getting Back to What Matters: Celebrating Scrapbookers

I won’t be writing for Scrapbook Update anymore. My contract was discontinued. That’s fancy for fired.

It came as quite a shock as I had been having some great conversations in the comments of my posts at Scrapbook Update. After I’ve had some time to reflect, I’m actually really fine with it. I covered CHA and wrote a few posts for Scrapbook Update and if you’ve seen my CHA posts over there, you know those are not me. I’m not a brand cheerleader or celebrity chaser. I wrote posts that were not me because that is how I understood that Scrapbook Update covers CHA and it was how I was asked to cover CHA.

Let’s face it, my content overall was not a good fit for Scrapbook Update. I pitched a column that would focus on the marketing side of scrapbooking and those posts went over well, but they really don’t fit at Scrapbook Update. I can be critical of the industry overall and occasionally of specific company’s choices. This is all speculation on my part, but this is not an environment that is good if your site depends on advertising revenue. Regardless, I’ve decided to reexamine my own advertising policy so that I can write what I want to write without any consideration for advertisers.

I did not create Scrapworthy Lives to become some sort of passive income stream or to become a star in the scrapbooking world. I created Scrapworthy Lives because I wanted my research to be read by a wider audience than academic research typically gets read by. I wanted this site to be a place to help me figure out how to take my research and turn it into a book. And I did this partially with my e-book on market research. The e-book came about as a way to financially support the site (cover hosting, newsletter fees, web guy fees, so on). The e-book was not a means to a passive income stream or anything like that, which is why I don’t really even market it (I know, ironic, right?). My real goal is to write a book for a wider audience based on my doctoral research and more recent research on scrapbooking.

That being said, I am getting rid of most of the advertising on Scrapworthy Lives. I don’t want any advertiser determining content on my site. I don’t ever want to feel like I can’t say something because it might offend an advertiser.

I will continue to advertise for Ella Publishing. Through 2012, I am part of the Take 12 design team, part of belonging to a design team is marketing for that brand and I need to continue with this commitment. Fortunately, I really like Ella Publishing’s products, so I’m not ethically troubled by this relationship. There also may be occasional advertising that shows up over the next couple of months on posts already scheduled. And I think advertising is attached to the RSS feed, which will get removed soon. I might advertise here and there very selectively for products I know and am comfortable with.

Don’t get me wrong, briefly after CHA, it crossed my mind to start doing more layout focused posts and adding inlinkz to the end, but then I remembered that I hate tracking down links, want to use old and new products, and really hate inlinkz on other people’s blogs (it reminds me, the reader, that your goal is to sell to me, not necessarily education, inform, or entertain). I thought perhaps, I may end up with free product from CHA and maybe I still will, but I don’t write about scrapbooking for free product. I have a job and can buy my own product. I would rather buy products I want to use rather than feel obligated to use product because it was given to me.

Over the next month, you will see some changes here at Scrapworthy Lives to more closely reflect my mission and goals with the site. It’s time for me to get back to what really matters to me: celebrating scrapbookers.

Last night I heard this song while chopping veggies for the deep freeze and it just seemed appropriate to include with this little manifesto. Enjoy!