Bloggers 'protect' readers from ads

19 Jan 2010, 2:49 pm   -   Source: Lisa Zilberpriver, SBS
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Blogger Louise Hawson juxtaposes the ceiling of Lidcombe's Ukrainian cathedral and a Nepalese symbol on a resident of the Sydney suburb. (Louise Hawson)

Blogger Louise Hawson juxtaposes the ceiling of Lidcombe's Ukrainian cathedral and a Nepalese symbol on a resident of the Sydney suburb. (Louise Hawson)

Blogs from tiny corners of the world like Sydney's suburbs attract clicks from locations as exotic as Mongolia, but bloggers aren't capitalising on their popularity.

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Hyper-local Australian blogs are attracting clicks from all over the world, but the bloggers behind them are selective about using advertising to make money from their hobby.

Publishing has become accessible to anyone with a computer and Internet access since the death of the typewriter and the advent of blogging.

Free, user-friendly online publishing platforms - called content management systems - came onto the scene last decade but have reached a particularly large number of users over the past five years.

Popular platform WordPress boasts 18 million publishers, while its Google-owned rival Blogger says 270,000 words per minute are published on its sites.

The word 'blog' is a contraction of 'web log', and in most cases that's what it is - daily log of an individual's thoughts, activities, photos, vidoes and links to other sites.

Aside from the obvious potential for individuals to use blogging to offensive ends, a different kind of blog known as 'hyper-local' has emerged. Hyper-local blogs are sites where individuals or groups post information and images from their own specific corner of the world.
 
Louise Hawson is a perfect example of hyper-local blogging. She is a freelance photographer who, for her blog 52 Suburbs, visits a different suburb of Sydney each week and posts a series of photographs of it which she feels tell its unique story.

By tracking clicks on her blog, Louise has discovered that her style appeals to Web surfers from all over the world, with one recent visitor apparently surfing in from Mongolia. 

Fellow Sydneysider and food blogger Karen Low reports seeing clicks from Nepal, Kazakhstan, India and Iran on her site, Citrus and Candy.

Sydney bloggers tell SBS why they do it

Some platforms offer bloggers the chance to post ads and make money from their work, but many feel this could offend their readers.

Louise is reluctant to post ads that aren't relevant to her blog.

"I'm not being precious, I have thought about (advertising) because the blog takes up so much time. It pushes life and my freelance work aside but I would only advertise only in ways that are in keeping with the spirit of the blog," she told SBS.

Her sentiments are echoed by Low.

"I don't have anything against ads on blogs as long as it is food-related and isn't intrusive. And it's nice to have a little extra cash on the side to sponsor my eating habits," she writes.

However while advertising feels like a faux pas for some bloggers, providing links to related sites or to other blogs has always been a feature of blog culture.

Blogs have become environments where almost all references are Internet-based. For example, Australian cooking blog tastedbytwo.com references online video-sharing hub YouTube in an effort to prevent bad baking practices.

"Most recipes will tell you to ‘fold’ the almond mixture into the meringue. If you fold it in like you would a cake, you will end up with air bubbles in your macaron and it will puff up like a biscuit in the oven. I’ve also tried ‘beating’ the air out of the mixture as seen here on Youtube, but it was too hard to control and my mixture went runny.

Through social networking sites like Twitter, like-minded bloggers have also begun to meet in real life.

"I can't think of any better way to introduce myself to Greek cuisine, than to meet up with 14 other food bloggers and stars of the Twitter world and allowing chef David Tsirekas to feed us silly," posts Low.

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