In a creative sense, bedlamfarm.com is my pride and joy, my wonder child, my muse and guide to the new world. Since May 2007 I have shared my life as honestly and openly as I can. This is my 11,521st post. I have posted words, poems, photos, videos. This blog is the story of my life here, and I care about it deeply. A remarkable community has grown around the blog and I value it deeply.

I have shared humiliating setbacks, errors of judgements, depression, crack-ups, spiritual revelations, panic attacks, book launches, good and bad reviews, the rise of my photography, the collapse of my marriage, falling in love with Maria and sharing my life with her. My philosophy was simple: be honest, post daily, be open.  I decided to share my life as well as my work, at a time when blogs were not held in much esteem by the literary world or scions of high culture.

This blog was my first halting effort to explore the new media world as a writer, and it has grown and deepened beyond my imagination, on track for nearly six million views in 2012 and linked to Facebook,  YouTube, Twitter, Tumblr and many other blogs and sites. The blog has become more animated, more visual, incorporating still and moving images. It grows all the time. It will never stop growing. I am faithful to bedlamfarm.com, mindful of it every day. My first impulse was to post frequently so that people will see something new. That has continued and evolved into an organic digital memoir.

In December, I finally found the format I love this format, and today I met with my digital guides at Mannix Marketing in Glens Falls to plot the next step. In the life of the new writer, there is always a next step. The writer’s life is changing, the blog a faithful mirror of that change. Hardcover book sales are steadily sipping, royalties are declining, conventional publishing is under great pressure from digital books and online booksellers like Amazon. The price of the book is dropping rapidly. I just wrote one for $2.99. So I need to explore ways of monetizing my blog, which is expensive to design and maintain, especially using photos and videos. Lots of equipment, maintenance fees. I accept the challenge of the new writer. I am publishing e-books, exploring that market. I am making small movies. I will not complain about my hard life or the hard life of the writer or the artist. I abhor whining. I am nothing but lucky, and I am responsible for my future.

So, I do not want to charge for the blog. I would be uneasy making people pay for it, and there is this: if it is free, nobody can tell me what to write or say or photograph.  I need to be free to write what I want, whether people like it or not. At Mannix today – I met with Chris Archibee, Pam Sissons, Red and Maria (she is thinking about ads for her site) – we decided to experiment with two or three advertising options – a fixed banner at the top or bottom of the site featuring one regular advertiser,  Google text ads at the bottom of the home page showing links to ads relevant to the site. If people click on them, the blog is paid a small amount monthly. Even small blogs can generate revenue because the payments are linked to matching companies with readers and subject matter – as Google does with its gmail.

Because of this blogs growing traffic – apart from the blog I am approaching 9,000 likes on Facebook –  I am also considering  a single banner ad for a company that offers a product I like and respect like the Fromm Family dog food out of Wisconsin that I am feeding Red and my other dogs.

From the first, Mannix Marketing and especially Chris Archibee have been my partner in developing the blog and helping it grow. I am grateful to them. They are always there, and always there in a good and responsive way.

The New Writer has to think differently about how he or she makes a living. The old idea – sell a novel to a publisher and live off the advance – is not feasible anymore. Hard cover book sales and royalties are just not strong enough and revenue from e-books is much smaller. Advances are shrinking and the competition is growing –  there are a million free books on Amazon.

I think my future is this. I will continue to write paper books, published in hard and softcover. These will also be published in e-book format. I will continue to publish e-book originals, perhaps one or two a year. I will enhance my writing by adding visual elements to it – photos, videos, movies. I will seek ways to monetize one of my most valuable assets – my blog. I will continue to grow my Facebook and social media audience.

People who say professional writers are doomed are too often trapped in what is to me an outdated idea of the writer – he takes years to write a book in isolation, living off a publisher’s advance and the willingness of people to spend $25-$30 for his work. He only sells his books in bookstores, and does not take e-mail from readers. I believe those days are changing, if not ending. The New Writer will be versatile, using traditional methods of story-telling mixed with social media, blogs, e-books and very visual and organic elements to the story. Blogs will become a valuable source of revenue. The new writer will change, the new book will evolve. I intend to be there with you. I will keep you posted on our decisions about ads. The main body of bedlamfarm.com will not be affected. No ads will appear in the main text or photographs. This is an experiment, and it may or may not work. Stay tuned.