Book Blogger Confessions- Making money off your blog

Book blogger confessions is a meme hosted on the 1st and 3rd Monday of each month. The meme is hosted by Tiger's all consuming books and For What It's Worth

 This weeks topic is:
Making money off your blog: There was a recent controversy about bloggers charging authors for reviews which leads to this week's question:
Almost all of us blog as a hobby in our spare time, usually for free but is there anything wrong with making money off your blog?
Should bloggers charge for reviews?
What about advertising on a blog?
When a blogger does allow book related advertising does it turn you off? Make you wonder about the honesty of their reviews?

Do you have a problem with purchase links (Amazon for example) that earn a blogger a small commission if a person purchases a book through that link?


Wow, apparently I did not hear about this new controversy in the blogging world because when I read that, it shocked me.

I do not see the harm in trying to make a little money on your blog. Blogging takes up a lot of time, both with reading the books and writing about them. Then there is all the networking that is involved with blogging and maybe the giveaways. That all takes time and maybe money so having things like Amazon purchase links is no biggy. It's not in your face and all it is is a link. But what disgusted me a little when I read about it is people charging for reviews. WTF? To me that is just wrong. I find that the deal is the author/publisher sends you a free copy of the book, and you give a review. The payment itself is the free book. To me, that is a sweet deal because most likely I would have bought the book anyways and still wrote a review for it. So I'm saving money by getting a free copy.

As for when bloggers have book related advertising on their blogs, no, that does not turn me off or have me distrusting the bloggers reviews. I'm just going to trust that the blogger liked the book so much that they allowed advertising on their blog. To me, my blog is my baby (figuratively speaking.) I have spent a big chunk of time designing (and learning html so I can design it), organizing, and networking to get it to what it is today. There is no way that I would clutter it up with advertising for something I dislike. I trust that can also go for many other bloggers. People who spend tons of money on personal designs (have you seen the prices for those? It's like $100 if not more. Yikes) wouldn't want to clutter it up either.