NOTE: This post came from a conversation Eric and I were having at 3:00 am EST.

Followers are just as important, if not more important than the big name bloggers. Without them, those powerhouses wouldn’t exist. They are a metric of pop culture in our community. We need them. But I don’t think any of us like to be labeled as a follower.

In every single industry, in management positions, there’s been individuals making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. That’s nothing new. When you can count the amount of bloggers making such an amount on your fingers and toes, it doesn’t look like the most promising industry to be in.

In most cases, for the topics that we talk about (business, marketing, management, etc…), bloggers in those industries should be looking at using their blogs as tools to develop their personal brands and promote themselves in hopes of being labeled as an expert or specialist.

You have to realize that every single pixel of digital real estate on your screen should be counted from a user’s perspective instead of how you can monetize it. Each pixel that is filled with an ad or an affiliate offer is a pixel that is competing with or compromising your content and brand.

Remember our branding game a couple weeks ago? Even if you didn’t see the whole picture and just got a color palette or style you were easily able to identify the brand behind the object, shape, or color. The same rules should apply to your blog and all of your pieces of communication. Having the latest widget (BlogRush or WidgetBucks, for example) or advertisement (distraction) takes from the uniquity that readers can relate to on your site.

In the end, the amount of pocket change you get form these ad networks, affiliate accounts, and widgets, doesn’t come anywhere near the cost of what you’re taking from your content, your reader’s experience, and your personal brand.

Only in rare instances on websites and blogs are you allowed to be an extrovert with advertisements. Those rare instances are cases like John Chow and Pro Blogger where the actual topic is monetizing your blog. They have such leeway with interruptions because that’s their subject. If your blog is about business ideas, overflow us with ideas, not ads.

If your background and the brand you’re trying to develop for yourself doesn’t have to do with blog monetization, you’re detracting from your name’s equity in the end, replicating what’s already being done by Darren Rowse and his like.

It took YoungGoGetter a while to realize that the $10, $20, or $30 we made by adding these meaningless widgets and advertisements to our blog really hurt our personal brand. For the amount of money a person can potentially make from something like “PayPerPost“, their expectations in regards to readership and brand development, has to be next to nil.

Take it seriously. Pick a subject. Write original content solely about that subject. Or, throw up a default template in WordPress, fill it with advertisements, and sit back in hopes of retirement. You can guess which of these two directions will deliver in the end.

People like John Chow make it look easy to swindle others into MLM, PPC ad networks, and affiliate marketing when in reality, content is king. We always have and always will latch to the Trumps of each industry as they exceed all markers and expectations. If you were to drop everything you’re doing right now and go full-force at Trump in the New York real estate market, your derriere would be served to you on a platter. Doing the same in saturated blogging markets (ie. a read ocean) is just as insane.

We’ve spoken about blogging many times on YGG, and the large majority of you reading this have a blog to call your own. Please, please, please, focus on finding a niche, not an angle, and decide how serious you want to take blogging.

While the Shoemoneys and all the other “blogger-turned-millionaires� may suggest that they only put an hour or so every day into blogging, you’ve got another thing coming. Look at people like Gawker Media and Collis at FreelanceSwitch. It’s a full-time gig if you hope to live off your thoughts and insights.

Whether you approach it as a hobby or a profession, respect the real-estate of your reader’s screen, and dodge the fads (BlogRush) and the false promise (WidgetBucks) in favour of quality content and relationships with your readers.

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