The Post BlogHer Con 07 Buzz

Yes there are some bloggers talking about the cliques and expressing some “high school like angst”. I just can’t address that. It is what it is. With 800 women, there are mini social groups. tribes. clicques. lists. It is our nature to flock this way. (shrug)

I’m most interested in the bigger buzz, and for me the more important buzz, the money buzz. It’s more complicated than that but I’m still going to call it the money buzz because it comes down to money – and class and I swear I’ve begun to channel Shuna but this is what it feels like to me.

First, the mommybloggers of color. I can’t even imagine what it would have felt like to hear a marketing dude say (and I’m paraphrasing) “we don’t market to you because we don’t know what to do with you.” Even reading it post conference was too much for me.

I’ve said for years, to anyone who was brave enough or stupid enough to ask my opinion (or be trapped someplace where I had the floor) that companies and websites and products need to stop being so WHITE and so MIDDLE CLASS and so STRAIGHT…. in that order. And every time I’ve said it, there is silence. Complete and total silence. They don’t know what to say to that or do with that. And putting an ethnic or person of color on your website does not change that you are still WHITE and MIDDLE CLASS and STRAIGHT. There’s more to it than that and you have the opportunity to figure it out by emailing people like Kelly or Stephania or Nordette or any other women of color who are out in the blogosphere. Ask them and they will tell you but you have to listen and you have to be serious about listening to them. Don’t just pretend like you care what they think and who they are.

I cannot believe I’m sitting here writing this. again. Didn’t I just say this stuff? I’m pretty sure I did. And I just can’t say anything else about this right now. So I’ll move on to another similar issue. This one from a panel I sat in on… the Blogging is More Than Words panel.

Everything was going along well when suddenly the room started to feel uncomfortable. Some of the panelists were talking about what they wouldn’t do to make money – to sell their work – to get noticed – to make money. I looked around the room and wondered how many of the women there could draw such firm barriers? How many women in that room just could not relate to what these panelists were saying? How many women might walk out of the room vowing not to promote themselves because it “doesn’t feel right”?

And then I thought some stuff that I’m not going to write in this blog post. And as I was thinking those things, Shuna stood up and said what I was thinking – but a lot more diplomatically. But because she was nice, and she didn’t hit hard, I’m not sure if anyone but me heard what she was trying to say….

Shuna said that what she was hearing was those women had choices. They could choose not to promote themselves, they had options. She wasn’t that lucky. She has to promote herself or nobody else will. She has to pay the bills. She doesn’t have the options, the choices that those women have. (Shuna did not blog specifically about this particular session but she does make mention of it in her live-blogging of the craft blogging session in day 2.)

Class. It’s about class. Again.  And on to the next issue…

It’s one thing to say “I will never do this….” and be able to stick to that – to be lucky enough to not compromise yourself in any way. But not everyone is that lucky.

When a blogger says “I would never do that” I always wonder what it would take to change their minds. Would you put ads on your blog if your husband lost his job and didn’t get a new one… for a year? And you had 3 kids? And no health insurance? What if you found yourself with 10k in medical bills and only made minimum wage? Would you put ads up then? What if you realized you could make as much money as Heather? What if you realized the only way you could feed your kids was to sell your art to Pay Per Post? What if…

And that’s the problem.

There are large groups of very smart and very talented bloggers and they’re quick to say they would never do this on their blog or they would never do that. And that’s fine. I’m not saying you should put ads on your site if you don’t want to. I’m not saying you should write for PPP if you don’t want to. I’m not saying you should grab some big company’s offer that’s to pay you a couple of hundred dollars a month and also by the way own your content forever. I’m definitely NOT saying that. But I think we all need to be very careful about what we say “never” about. Not just because we might find ourselves having to do exactly what we said we wouldn’t…but because other women are listening. And other women are not YOU and they are not ME. Those women do not have the all of the same opportunities that we do. When we say “never!” we make them second guess themselves for their choices. When we say “NEVER!” we make them feel like second class citizens because they can’t say “NEVER!”

Women shouldn’t under-value their work. This is something else I’ve ranted about for months on end. The big company who offers peanuts and wants to own your content just might be offering you a really bum deal. But maybe not. We aren’t all Dooce. Or Woulda Coulda. Or BYH err Notes From the Trenches. Or Motherhood Uncensored. Or Busy Mom. Or Sweetney or … or … or … for some of us, a couple of hundred dollars a month is as good as it is going to get or is a really excellent way to get a foot in the door. And for some of us, Google Adsense that brings in $25 a quarter is as good as it gets, not everyone can sell ad space for $30 or $50 or $100 a week.

Be careful with what you say “never” to, please. And be careful how you say it. Not everyone writes the way you do. Not everyone can land the fab job in a great community. And that’s ok. Everyone has value. Everyone’s blog has value.

And one last thing, there’s not a damn thing wrong with selling your work for less than someone else says you should. (Unless of course that someone else is offering to pay you what she thinks you’re worth. And she isn’t, is she? She’s also not giving up her latest big money gig so you can get your share… )