I recently got in touch with a friend from my junior college. He’s pretty well-known now as the owner of Singapore’s #1 blog on wedding. He started blogging in August 2006, and has developed a way to earn $1000-2000 a month through advertisements and such from his blog, and has written a book about it.
When I heard about it, my immediate first reaction was to say that, “Hey, I want this too! And I want it for Catholic Writings!” So I shot an email off to Clare, who taught me how to use WordPress to set up my own TheCatholicWriter.com website, which I use to consolidate all the (Catholic) writing that I do.
That night, I went to bed feeling extremely excited at the prospects of earning $1000-2000 from my soon-to-come Catholic blog, but I felt a great sense of uneasiness and unrest as well. I struggled hard to get to sleep, but could not do so.
Having been doing the Examen of Consciousness for some time, I have learnt to tell the difference between a spiritual consolation and a spiritual desolation. Although this adrenaline-pumping feeling coursing through me was very similar to the kind of rush I get while writing, I was able to identify that this feeling was in fact my gut feeling ringing alarm bells in my head.
Ever since my experience of nearly getting conned at Sim Lim, I have learnt to obey my gut feeling even if I can’t explain it rationally. I finally fell asleep.
The answer came to me the next day, during an MSN conversation with Clare. She wisely advised me not to go ahead with it and explained the reason for my uneasiness – Catholic Writings is a form of ministry, and I should not use this ministry for profit. She also gave a rational response – Catholic Writings will only attract advertisements from those who want to promote sex, pornography, masturbation, homosexuality, etc. How true!
So, once again, I see my hopes for turning Catholic Writings into a money-making machine fly out the window. But thanks to Clare, I now have a reason to keep Catholic Writings going as a ministry, and as the #1 Catholic Blog in Singapore!
P.S.: Look out for a viewpoint of mine in this weekend’s issue of CatholicNews. It concerns working in the church and my ongoing dilemma about money and ministry.
Filed under: Discernment, Money
Hi Daniel,
How have you been?
I believe what you are sharing is based on your passion, after having known you have past 10 years and you are my best friend in JC and now too.
I think monetising a blog can be seen from many viewpoints…for me, you may want to consider giving away your blog income back to a needy cause and I see this as a return to the society…
And I am sure there are more advertising sources besde the ones mentioned by your friend…if you are willing to surf the web and see for yourself, there are many more such as book writers in your niche (Catholic writings), bookshops, tshirt companies which print shirts for Catholic Church goers ( a friend of mine turns this into a business and provide tshirt for their campers and friends from Church)….
=) do catch up soon and I have sent you an email to catch up
oh your friend is right. there are alternatives. HAHA. what i meant is, it is great to earn what revenue you can from ministry, but the way you were going on so excitedly about it, i feel like u were in danger of thinking of this blog as a ‘money-making machine’ (YOUR OWN WORDS HOR haha) and lose focus.
so yeah include a few select advertisements if you can, why not? after all, a ministry has to be self-sustainable – ‘a worker should be given what he needs’ or something like that, in st. paul’s letter to the something or other right? haaha. really bad at quotes. :X
you also have not put a visual link to your befriending jesus site. v impt u know. put it on top of ur left sidebar above ‘catholic writer is #1′. (congratulations!! it’s an achievement!) above, ‘#1′, because i don’t think readers check google stats… heih
you can invite wellsprings lol and some christian or motivational publishers… i found some on web but forgot what’s the name… if u choose properly it’s very value-added to ur readers!
Maybe one way to approach this is to set some basic infrastructure up but don’t think about the money coming in
It always gets bad when u start focusing on it…
GrEg
Hi Clare,
Yes, I do lose focus from time to time, but thank God I have people like you to put me back into perspective. Unfortunately, I can’t put paid advertisements on this blog because of WordPress.com’s TOCs.
But I have put the link to Befriending Jesus on the top left as you recommended.
Oh, the #1 Catholic Blog thing? It’s the first thing that appears when you search for “catholic writings” on Google. But only on the international search, not the Singapore search. So maybe a more accurate claim is “The #1 Catholic writings blog in the world!” LOL
God bless,
Catholic Writer
Hi Greg,
Haha! My only problem in this is that if I don’t focus on it, I don’t focus on it at all, and if I focus on it, that’s all I focus on. That’s one of my character flaws…
God bless,
Catholic Writer