As many of you know, I love my blog. I am committed to it, every day. My early ideas about it are holding up – it is a record of my life, a journal, a living memoir. It has changed quite a bit and been redesigned a dozen times, as I add video, photography and other ideas and pages to bedlamfarm.com. I am now negotiating with a premium dog food company – the company that makes the food Red, Lenore and Frieda eat every day – about putting an ad up on the top of my site.
The ad would be separate from the editorial content and photograph and the company would offer special premiums and anything else they wished to show. I would get a monthly fee, small at first, bigger if the ad works and some dog food – if people click-through on the ads, read them and sometimes buy their product. The idea was actually instituted by my vet. She recommended this food in response to issues I was having regarding my dog’s coat, stool and some other medical issues. She said this food was the best she had seen and so I went out and bought some.

I also need a very particular food for Red, a high-energy working dog who needs protein and burns up a lot of calories. She recommended a special line of this dog food for him, and I was quite surprised by the results. All of the dogs coats have shined up, they have plenty of energy and – you all understand about stools – their stools look what dog’s stools ought to look like. That is, to me, one of the great measures of health. We are close to an agreement. It would be a good thing for me, as the blog is expensive to maintain and I don’t want to charge for it.

Better yet, this is a company I like, with actual values that I share. It is not part of a big corporate conglomerate. I’m very comfortable with the philosophy and approach of this company. They seem to really love animals. So I’ll keep you posted. I like the idea of advertising food that my dogs actually eat.

And I think it is important to think of ways to monetize blogs like mine without charging for them. I want to keep my ideas and images free. I’ll let you know what’s happening.