Editor's Note: Google Contributor is no longer operating for general use as indicated below, and this post was edited to remove links to their Web site and embedded elements that are no longer functioning.

Would you pay money to read The Hot Iron? And what if by paying you saw less ads on the site?

I know I have asked this question before when I added CentUp to this very blog. Another new revenue model for writers has come about from Google called Contributor. As I have no illusions (delusions?) of grandeur in earning a living from this very site alone in itself, I was more intrigued to try it to how it really works.

How It Works

Google Contributor allows a Web user to contribute money monthly for ads to not be shown on Web sites it visits. The ads specifically are ones from Google’s own ad services, AdSense and DoubleClick. So if a banner ad comes from another source other than Google (and there are many) that ad will still appear. In the place of the ad it may be blank or a thank you message for supporting the particular Web site.

From the Web site owner’s perspective, if they are displaying on their site through Google, rather than getting the money for someone seeing and clicking on an ad, they are getting money from the user’s Contributor account, in a sense offsetting the cost of the ad usually paid by the advertiser.

A few items of note on Contributor. Currently it only works in the US. By someone contributing money, either US$2, US$5 or US$10 a month, they are still going to see ads. As shown in the chart below, by contributing those 3 previously mentioned dollar figures, they will see respectively 5-15%, 15-25% or 25-50% fewer ads. These fewer ads are across all Web sites with Google ads not just one in particular. So if you contribute $10 a month, thinking it will all go to me for reading The Hot Iron, it will not.

Is It Worth It?

That’s a great question – is it worth it? I honestly don’t know, as I have just set it up on the blog, and I have also signed up as a Contributor at the whopping US$2 a month level.

Here is a screenshot of this blog with an ad appearing at the top:

Here is a screenshot of this blog without an ad appearing at the top:

I know – the difference is amazing!

It will be interesting to see how often I notice the ads not there. Last year was the 20th anniversary of the Web banner ad. As I heard somewhere – and I forgot the source – it was marking 20 years of people ignoring banner ads! So even if it technically works, it will be interesting to see if anyone notices.

Are you a Google Contributor? Did I convince you to join, or not join? I welcome your thoughts in the comments of this post.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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It’s been said over and over that all good things must come to an end. Where some ends are because something is broken or changed, it can be simply because something has come to its natural conclusion. That latter case is what I am doing with a writing journal, as I have recorded thoughts on its last blank page.

In the past I have talked about how I write out most all of my blog posts. Call me old-fashioned, but it works for me. Of course sometimes I just put fingers to the keyboard (all 2 of them) For those I have written (read: printed) most were captured in a journal.

This particular journal is a college-ruled composition notebook I bought at Target on September 5, 2012, and I only remember that as it was a Target-brand notebook, and the day I bought it I wrote my first post in it, Remember Team Morale During Work Stress. Since then it has captured many blog posts, brainstorming for blog topics, scratch paper for other uses – such as my kids stats from their last doctor’s appointment – as well as a doodle pad for said kids. Where many things were written from front to back, others started from the back to front, and the last post I wrote in there, My Takeaways From The Book 52 Motivational Quotations For Salespeople By Tom Cruz, was about two-thirds of the way through it. That being said, it was a very organized collection.

What To Do?

So what do I do with a journal that has traveled just about as much as I have over the last several years? Do I simply recycle it, shred it, or save it? I am not about to start saving notebooks, especially as I am trying, with moderate success, to declutter my life. But as I simply can’t discard it altogether, I cut the spine from it and fed it into my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, saved it as a PDF document, and have archived it with my other personal documents. That way, if 100 years from now someone wants to know how The Hot Iron was created, they can look at a PDF file rather than yellowing pages in a dusty box. That is if that dusty box wasn’t long tossed out by my future grandchildren first.

This post you are now reading was written out in another journal I bought at a Walgreens last summer and wrote my first post on the book Scrum, as that day I did not have my other journal with me and I needed something to capture my writing, It too has had some other uses, some I hope to share in the future.

What do you use to capture your creativity? Please share in the comments of this post… and let me know if you typed it straight from your mind or after transcribing it from paper.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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Typically the inspiration for something I write here at The Hot Iron comes from something that impacts me. It could be a conversation I have with someone. It could be a book I read or a product I try. It could be something I experience. Whatever it is, it will drive me to put pen to paper – or fingers to keyboard – to share it with the people I am fortunate are reading here.

Annually something occurs that I have addressed in various ways, the anniversary of the launch of this blog. With my Hello World post on December 30, 2006, I met a goal of launch a blog by the end of that year, and also launched something that is now entering its tenth year, racking up over 800 posts and over 7 million page hits.

Writing this post is always different from the others. Rather than try to come up with something profound or prolific (or any other adjective beginning with “pro”), I will simply say thank you! Thank you to all who read this and all who have inspired me to write over the last year and years. I have gotten more excited about blogging in 2015, and I am looking forward to more sharing and conversations in 2016.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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It came to me a while back, something I guess I always knew subconsciously but only then came to the forefront of my mind – most people spend most of their time around their job. I then decided to put fingers to technology to see if I was right, and here’s my analysis and further thoughts on it.

Jobs and all their trappings

When thinking about how we spend our time, our jobs tend to be at the top of our list. This is of course assuming we don’t sleep most of our lives, but I digress. The job itself is the major time hoarder, assuming the typical 8-hour day. But if your day is anything but typical, it in itself is probably more than 8 hours, give or take a few minutes to a few hours.

As the TV infomercials say, “But wait, there’s more!” There’s the commute to work, both to and from it. You then need to prepare to go to work – wake up, shower (hopefully), eat and of course thinking about work. After work, there is probably some decompression, which involves more thought. If you work for the bare-minimum tech-savvy company, you can probably check your work email on your mobile device, and that adds up quickly, whether it is during the day or off-hours, including weekend. Then there's time devoted to things like doctor's appointments if things aren't so great on the job, but I don't have to go down that path here, do I?

Speaking of those off-hours and weekends, you are also thinking about work in addition to being connected to it. You may also be shopping for work, whether it is clothes, food or other supplies to get you through the day. And let’s face it, you may even take time after (or before) hours and on the weekends to actually do work, taking those time-consuming thoughts into even more time consuming actions.

So what’s your point Mike?

Now that I have set a somewhat somber point, you may be asking why? Why even bring this up?

Where I have thought about this very topic for a while, I wanted to write it out to make it real, tangible, and in my own face, and as a result in yours as well. By doing so, it is a realization that this will play into my upcoming goals for the new year. Where this time allotment towards my job may not be a direct or the primary input to my goals and decisions, but acknowledging it, I am realizing it will have some impact on it. From what I buy to where I live to what I do outside of work to whatever I may not have even thought of, the amount of time that my job currently occupies my time will come into consideration.

This time consumption perhaps consumes you as well – hopefully less, but perhaps even more. And let’s face it, it consumes most everyone. I say most everyone as I realize there are those who may not have to or want to work as much, and have the ability to disconnect from it. It may be because they are wealthy, live a simpler life, have a business or job that does not require as much of their time, work part-time but make enough to make them happy, or something else I couldn’t possibly fathom, but would love to.

Even if your job takes up most of your time, that may be ok, providing you love it, or maybe just a strong like. Or it’s convenient to where you live so your commute time is shorter. Or whatever it is or are, when you look at it written out, I hope you are at a minimum content with it.

The lay of the land

Now that I have painted the picture, do I (or you) want to hang it on the wall, or change it? I am not trying to draw any conclusions here – just simply putting it out as I said earlier, but reserving the right to refer to this in future writings.

I welcome your thoughts on this in the comments to this post… and please leave out any specifics about your job in those comments!

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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As follow-up to my inquisitive and popular blog post on 2 questions I ask anyone thinking about blogging, namely to those who are still interested in blogging after reading it, I now would like to offer advice on how to get started with your blog.

First, setup a free blog at Wordpress.com

You need a blog in order to blog. A blog is a Web site with a content management system (or CMS) which is software on a Web server that allows you to easily publish what you write.

If you have been to a blog site before, there is a good chance it’s on Wordpress, as it is the most well-known and used blog CMS. Wordpress can be used for entire Web sites as well, and not just blogs, but we won’t get ahead of ourselves too much here. Another reason for using Wordpress.com is in its portability potential. If you build a blog at Wordpress.com and in the future you decide you want to move it to another Web host, you can literally export the site and move it. Note I have oversimplified how I described this process and some technical expertise is involved.

Plus, creating a blog at Wordpress.com is free, so if you start one and realize it’s too much for you, there is no major financial commitment.

Register and set a domain name for your blog

Where I just got done telling you to create a free blog, now I am recommending you spend a little more on a domain name.

By registering a domain name for your blog and tying it to your Wordpress.com blog, you gain in several ways. By default, your blog will be named something like myblogname.wordpress.com, but myblogname.com is a more unique name and easier to remember. Also, if you decide to move your blog in the future, you can keep the same Web address – you will not be able to keep myblogname.wordpress.com as that is not your own domain name, wordpress.com.

A domain name also a unique name to your blog. Where it may be presumptive that your blog will be a runaway smash hit on the Internet. If you have peered around The Hot Iron there are plenty of articles on getting your own domain name and other benefits of doing so. You can register a domain name many places, and I always recommend name.com and note I did not get paid to say that!

Ready to blog in no time

Setting up a blog on Wordpress.com and registering a domain name can all be done in under an hour. Configuring your blog and performing some customizations may take a little longer, and that all depends on how much you want to do, though I wouldn’t focus too much on the look of your blog and rather on its substance – the writing!

I hope this has helped, and please share a comment to this post once you do it and share the link to your new blog for all to see.

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This is from The Hot Iron, a journal on business and technology by Mike Maddaloni.

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