Back in April I put my first ad on the site. It’s over on the right, a network of revolving ads from BlogHer. Now that I’ve brought it up, you’re wondering whether I’ve made any money, and whether it was worth it.

To the first question, yes, a check finally arrived recently. But it was only enough to cover a Mexican dinner for two. I was disappointed, but I don’t hold it against BlogHer. The model for online advertising stinks compared to print.

Let me explain. In the past I was the executive editor of an international magazine. I felt proud when I realized recently that its annual readership was once the same as the number of annual unique page views on my site. To buy an ad in the magazine cost hundreds to thousands of dollars for just one issue, however. Here on my website, it costs pennies to reach the same number of eyeballs.

At the magazine, the money from advertising supported a staff of around 20 people. Here, I can get a few enchiladas.

Still, it’s been a good experiment, despite ads for Coffeemate and Crystal Light (not classified as junk food, which I banned.) My relationship with BlogHer has grown. I got paid to syndicate a post on recipe writing on the BlogHer website. Last week BlogHer’s syndication deal with She Writes duplicated my post on the site’s home page, with a photo of my new book. I got no additional pay, but seeing the cover of Will Write For Food on the home page of a social media site for women writers is terrific exposure. I’ll be speaking at the BlogHer conference in New York later this week, and spoke at BlogHer Food last year. Could all this have happened without my ad? Of course. But I like the association with the company.

During the same period I’ve made about the same money from Amazon by putting links to books in my copy. I try to be careful about which and how many, because I’m not trying to make a living here. I’ve just added an Amazon list of what I’ve been reading lately, over there on the lower right, inspired by the one on 101 Cookbooks.

Other bloggers have tried selling their own ads versus using an ad network. Jacqueline Church told me the most she made from Foodbuzz was $12, so she started her own advertising department and puts ads on her entire website, not just her blog.  She has a rate card, just like magazines do. It explains what advertisers pay for which size ad at what frequency, whether 3 months, 6 months or a year. She takes ads for her newsletter and factors that into the equation. Sometimes she has used  used the online ad space for a public service announcement, such as announcing a canning class.

“Ad networks don’t make any sense to me,” she said. “I tried Google Ads and Foodbuzz and made pennies. I just thought, if I take that same 100 x 200 pixel ad and find one person to buy an ad for one month, then it suits me better. My readers get a new product in my mix and the company gets exposure to my readers.

Her website is written in Joomla. She does all he posting and maintenance, but pays someone to code. She asks people for jpeg image files and creates hot links to the companies. “It’s not the path that everybody’s going to take, mostly because it does require a little more work,” Church admitted. “But I feel better about having people I support. As long as I’m being transparent and honest, I feel okay about it. I don’t want readers to be annoyed about me taking an ad for Kraft Singles when I am writing about raw milk. Everybody draws lines in different places.”

Church says she makes enough to cover her hosting service and her Constant Contact newsletter bill. Maybe I’ll get there one day. I expect my blog income will creep up slowly, along with my readership. And I’m okay with that.

You’ll notice something new. It’s an ad, on the right, from BlogHer Publishing Network.

I know. I’ve crossed over to the other side, and I’m thrilled. It’s because I have redefined myself.  I’m no longer just a blogger whose subject is food writing. I’m the publisher of my blog.

Being in charge overall is new for me. When I was a magazine editor, I headed my department. I directed the editorial content, assigned and edited stories, worked with the art director on layout and images, and strategized how to grow readership. The other heads of departments were in charge of marketing, advertising, production, design (although sometimes reporting to me) and circulation.

Fast-forward to the Internet, where, as a blogger,  I am in charge of editorial and all the other departments too. I might as well also be the publisher, since I am ultimately responsible for the publication, success and quality of my blog.

So, continuing the magazine analogy, since magazines take ads, so does my blog. And since I’m the publisher, I will personally quash any conflicts of interest. There will be no fawning editorial related directly to ads, nor will I blog for pay. Whew! That was easier than when I was only the head of editorial. It’s great to be in charge.

Why  BlogHer? I’ve met the founders, three powerful, super-smart women whom I admire. Also because they’ve invited me to be part of BlogHer by speaking at their conferences, and it’s been a professional, respectful and well-organized experience.

Some food bloggers think ads clutter their site or signify some kind of journalistic lack of integrity. But others have been taking ads for ages. Where do you come down?

Photo courtesy Flickr Creative Commons.

BlogHer Food in San Francisco was one long day of group hug. It started at the networking breakfast at 8 a.m. and ended at the after-party thrown by Jaden Hair of Steamy Kitchen, Ree Drummond of The Pioneer Woman Cooks and Elise Bauer of Simply Recipes beginning at 8 p.m.

Here you can see just part  of the crowd, everyone talking at once in deafening volume, in the hallway in front of the bookseller.

Read about the party… I mean conference, on these early posts from Carrots ‘N Cake and Kath Eats Real Food. Well, girls just want to have fun. And we did.

Sponsors, who subsidized the cost of the event, prevailed between the sessions. Hunky Chef Rocco DiSpirito hawked Bertolli frozen meals over a group lunch while they actually served us the frozen pasta as entrees. (Hello?!) Celebrity chef and Citizen Cake owner Elizabeth Faulkner demoed with Scharffen-Berger during a break, and booth people plied us with cans of chicken stock and spray Pillsbury frosting for a cupcake challenge. A classy cocktail party on the rooftop sponsored by Campbell’s Soup Co. capped off the official part of the day. I was so excited about seeing bloggers in person after reading their work online and Twittering and Facebooking with them, I almost didn’t mind.

And oh yeah, we went to sessions on such topics as the blogger’s voice (where I was a panelist), best practices, and new opportunities. More on what I learned later. First I need to lie down.

Did you go or write a post about the day? Have a comment? Let me know.

P.S. Updates: Transcripts of BlogHer Food 09 sessions are now online. More reports on the conference from Simply Recipes, Pioneer Woman, GlutenFree Girl, Tartelette, and Steamy Kitchen.

The Federal Trade Commission has new guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they’re being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product. If you read them,  you’ll see that most of the language pertains to advertising, so for now, you’ll have to read between the lines.  The guidelines don’t define  a “payment,” for example, and don’t specify what incentives other than cash must be disclosed to readers. See this Cnet story for more.

This is old territory for me, a former magazine editor who made and enforced  rules about reviewing.  Ethics rules have existed for years but are hardly uniform. At my magazines,  I thought I knew which reviewers received and returned which products, but I probably never had the whole picture. I hired a full-time editor whose job was to sift through press releases and write up products. He often hid from me the expensive gifts companies sent him during the holidays. At another magazine, I inherited a severely underpaid staff accepting tons of freebies as compensation, then never running the stories. I reorganized the department, paid them what they were worth, and got rid of that system.

One critical difference is that all the reviewers and writers were professional freelance writers and employees paid for their work. But most food bloggers aren’t paid. Perhaps some feel that freebies are justified, that they’ve earned them somehow. In July at the BlogHer conference in Chicago, Liberty Mutual surveyed 175 bloggers on responsible blogging and found:

• 98 %  believe it is acceptable to receive a free product.
• 87% believe it is okay to write company-sponsored posts.
• Most mentioned transparency, disclosure and honesty as key caveats to receiving free products and writing sponsored posts.

According to Business Week, many advertisers have turned to the blogosphere as an inexpensive way to get publicity, offering cash and products in exchange for glowing reviews.”Bloggers are cost-efficient,” says Sean Corcoran, an analyst at Forrester Research. He titled a recent report “Add Sponsored Conversations to Your Toolbox: Why You Should Pay Bloggers to Talk About Your Brand.” That’s right. Some companies pay bloggers to write about products in their own blogs, and according to the survey, 87% of bloggers think that’s fine.

I decided to do a little research of my own, and contacted a few top food bloggers to ask questions. I was a little shocked when I spoke privately with a blogger whose “star is still ascending.” She said she gets so much free stuff that, were she were to write about it all, she would never need any other content. Ford offered her a free Mustang convertible for the weekend if she would just take a photo of it and put it in her blog. She declined — only because she was too busy — but another blogger took Ford up on it. (Hint: If the other blogger thought about having to disclose this by writing “Ford gave me this free car for the weekend in exchange for a photo” maybe she would have passed.) Marketing people have offered the blogger I spoke to free restaurant meals, free hotel stays, and hundreds of dollars worth of free food and kitchen equipment.

She says she only writes about things she likes. The reality is that, like restaurants, most products and foods fall into the gray area between poor and excellent. I think it’s her responsibility to talk about the gray area, and to occasionally slam a product when deserved. Maybe she’s afraid that if she does so, the door will close on the freebies. If so, her priorities are skewed. What should matter most is her relationship with her readers. She has to earn their respect, then keep it.

I also researched whether guidelines on product reviewing exist. The Food Blog Code of Ethics talks mostly about reviewing restaurants. It says only this on the subject of products: “If we receive an item for free…, we will mention so in our review.” Two blogging groups,  the Word of Mouth Marketing Association and the Social Media Business Council, have adopted self-regulatory guidelines not for bloggers but on how marketers should work with bloggers. That’s a good start, but who says they will care.  Here are my seven recommendations specific to food bloggers:

1. If marketing people offer you products, have a policy. Some bloggers refused to accept anything, but I don’t think that’s going to happen. Take only what is appropriate and relevant for your blog. (Ex. a Mustang is not food related.) Don’t promise in advance that you will write about the product or experience. Do not succumb to pressure. Do not accept products where strings are attached.

Here’s what one top food blogger said. “I always say that I will not guarantee that I will mention the product on my site and do also not want to be contacted afterwards if I will mention it on my site. In that respect, I only try to deal with companies that “get it”, who don’t have pr flaks that just want to hassle me endlessly. Most quality companies either have good pr teams or I deal with the owners themselves.”

Assume all products (not consumed) should be returned, unless the marketer says to keep it. Have a policy about what to keep. For example, at the New York Times, reporters are not allowed to accept anything worth more than $25. Would you really feel right about free monthly coffee for a year, for example? I wouldn’t.

2. Ditto about free trips. Don’t go if it is not relevant to your blog, but do go if it’s something you need to learn. Again, don’t promise anything. Here’s an email a top food blogger sent me. “I have accepted trips, but not to review a place, but for educational or social reasons. For example, Kingsford Charcoal sent me to “grilling university” in Arizona for a weekend.  I didn’t know how to grill, but wanted to learn.  After I got back home I bought a gas grill, a kettle grill, and started grilling and experimenting. Wait a minute, they gave me a kettle grill (I asked for one), but that was 3 years ago.  If this were today, I wouldn’t have asked for the grill.  I would still accept the trip if I thought I could learn.”

3. If you do write about products and trips, be honest with your readers. You have only your reputation. Disclose when a company sends you a product for review. It doesn’t hurt, and it makes you appear ethical and upstanding. Otherwise you look suspicious. Ex. A food blogger Twittered about a particular resort. I wondered why she mentioned it by name. Did a company send her there for free?

4. If you don’t write about products, don’t take them. This seems obvious, although I heard that a well-known food blogger accepts products all the time and never blogs about them. What is that about? Her mailing address isn’t on her blog, so she is telling marketers where to send the bling each time? Yes, some marketers are eternally hopeful and will keep sending product when it’s clear there’s no outcome,  and they get what they deserve. But it seems greedy to keep taking it. Do not take products you don’t write about or want just to give them to friends as gifts, or even sell them.

5. Don’t always love everything. It makes you look like a shill, and after a while readers won’t need to read the post to know what you wrote, because it’s always a rave review. Plus, it looks like you can be bought. Read restaurant reviews for examples. Most of the time, they are positive, but with pros and cons. Every once in a while, a reviewer slams a place. They won’t slam a mom and pop shop, but if an expensive restaurant opens with tons of hype, reviewers will let them have it if the experience doesn’t match up with the cost. Be balanced.

6. Be clear about product sections on your blog. The Amazon store is self-explanatory. I like that. But other listings are more coy. If you’re going to list products in categories like “Shop” or “Recommends, ” your readers won’t know whether it’s code for “Someone gave this to me for free and now I’m writing about it.” Make clear whether the company sent you these products, or whether you discovered them on your own. Readers have a right to know.

7. If a company pays you to write about their products, disclose it, every time. I don’t like the idea, but at least it will be honest. For example, one food blogger wrote about a product and company, saying they were a “client and sponsor.” Cool. She gets my respect.

Reviewers represent their readers, not just themselves, and certainly not the companies they review. They are guides to tell readers whether it’s worth their money and time. As a blogger, you are a guide for your readers too. Protect your readers and respect them. Without them, no marketer would be interested in you.

Now, what are your thoughts? If you’re a blogger, do you take issue with these points? If you’re a blog reader, do you care about ethics?

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