Thinking by itself doesn't pay very well

It would be nice if it did, or at least it seems that way at first thought but in fact food for thought interpreted literally is not the best of ideas. Just about everyone can express thoughts, so if that alone was compensated monetarily then the value of money would be depreciated and the transfer of funds would be a waste of time and effort. And money. Payment for good thoughts is somewhat more reasonable, and happens to some extent, but that requires a third party making decisions about what thoughts deserve payment and the third party would probably demand more money than the sum paid to the thinker.

At least, that is how things worked in the past. Nowadays, thoughts are often judged to worthy of payment not so much by one person but by ranking algorithms that determine how likely it is for thoughts made public over the internet to actually reach large enough members of the public through search engines that they will lead a potential customer to a product or service advertised nearby or within a set of thoughts by a writer. As of now, my thoughts are not considered to pull much weight by the powers that be and therefore I may not be able to get much money through the thoughts on this blog anytime soon.

As many potential readers probably already know, it is possible to make some money online by linking to other websites that want publicity through a combination of potential customers clicking on the link to their site and search engines giving them favorable treatment because sites that get linked to seem important. Payperpost is a service that I used on a regular basis during the summer of 2006 but unfortunately for my bank account that ended quickly because my blog back then was part of a community site that became associated with sloppy writing practices. Payperpost apparently did not take long to discover that if they wanted to have a good relationship between bloggers and advertisers they would have to employ good word of mouth ethics, which in my opinion includes not expecting advertisers to pay for bloggers to talk about them when said bloggers are basically talking to themselves or might harm the advertiser by association if the blog is poorly written. Since my blog is relatively new it might seem like I am talking to myself so Payperpost cannot ethically facilitate a business relationship between myself and advertisers that have not specifically expressed a lack of concern about whether a blog has a Google Page Rank or not. That equals very few opportunities for quick money so far, but quick money often turns into dead money anyway so I will have to work on filling my blog with interesting thoughts so in the future Payperpost will be able to do more to help me support this blogging habit that I seem to have.

It is also ethical to make it clear that an advertisement is in fact an advertisement as well as to make sure that a blog whose owner gets paid through Payperpost isn't full of paid ads. The latter will certainly not happen anytime soon due to reasons stated above, and I am about to insert code clarifying that this is in fact a paid advertisement and not mere rambling about how I used to make money blogging and haven't really done so recently. Behold the code in its intended form: