Giving It To MyLot

I TEND TO SPEND QUITE A LOT OF TIME OVER AT A LITTLE PLACE CALLED MYLOT, and I have to say that for the most part is indeed a site that, unlike many others before it—we'll just toss out the Bubblews name here for these purposes—it seems to have its act together when it comes to policing the site and making regular cash payouts to its members there.

I have not missed a payment to date.

While MyLot does not pay anywhere near a site like BUBBLEWS did, I think that is actually a good thing. The fact is that anyone who did not fully come to the realization at the massive payouts Bubblews offered that the entire thing was one giant scam just waiting to come to its very dead end, you just simply could not have been operating with even half of a brain in your head.

It was too good to be true. We all knew it. But so long as the cash register continued to ring, however unrealistic it all was that it could keep on going, YOU kept on going until the cash register stopped ringing.

And it did. Quite abruptly actually.

But I am not here really to talk about the good side of MyLot. I am here to talk about something that bothers me a bit about MyLot.

I said that MyLot polices the site quite well. And that's true. They keep out the riff-raff, and they delete posts quite rapidly when they break a policy. You want that and need that on a site like this, as things can get ugly right quick, and before you know it, advertisers start wanting to pull their ads.

And that's bad because that's the bread and butter of a site like MyLot, and of course what allows the content providers to get paid.

But I do think the site sometimes goes a little bit far on that policing...especially as it applies to what some might call spam. In one way or another, being that we are content providers, and that we are attracted to sites like MyLot at all, we all generally have something to sell outside of just the content we provide on those sites.

Like me, for example. I have an album out there on iTunes and other places. I have a book out there on Amazon which is also sold in a few places. I have this blog and other blogs. I have articles I have written on HubPages.

There's stuff out there that I want to share. Both for the purpose of sharing. But also for the purpose of increasing my opportunities for revenue if I can as well.

Other members of the site write books. Some have little side businesses making designer art, greeting cards, and even lotions and detergents. Not a single one of us expects to get rich doing any of this stuff.

Yet the site seems to warrant anything that even mentions indirectly about our "side gigs" is a post that should quickly and rightly be deleted.

I tend to disagree with this.

Look, if I post a direct link to my album on iTunes, for example (It's Pink Flamingoes by Jim Bauer if you had any desire to look it up) in a MyLot post. Yeah. That's undeniable spam. But if I simply mention, such as I did here, that the album is available on iTunes without providing a link directly to it, and use the post to also share for free a song from the album, to my mind that is not spam at all. It is simply saying to anyone reading the post, here's a song I want to share from my album called X, if you want to take a look at it here is where you can find it...

That is simple sharing.

Now, don't get me wrong. I am not outwardly complaining, nor am I calling on the site to change its policies. It's their site, they can do what they want with it, and they can make whatever rules they want to make inside of it. If I want to participate there I have to simply abide by their rules and live with it if I want to get paid anything at all.

But there's part of the thing. I don't need the money that bad. It's not enough money to get my panties all in a bunch over. So, to that end, I do have the ability to cite my disdain for an action they take by taking something from them that they need more than I do.

Money from advertising.

And so that is what I did after they pulled my last post that mentioned my album and where it could be found. I stopped participating. I stopped posting. I made my presence there very nominal.

It has probably not so much as made a slight dent in their revenue, and they probably haven't even noticed my lack of participating over there. Either way.

But it also reminded me of THIS blog I started which was a way of doing exactly the same thing (or something very similar to it) HERE and being in FULL CONTROL of what I post, how it promotes things, and HOW MUCH I can earn overall.

I am at my payout level at MyLot. So, that means that when "checks" are handed out in February for the month of January, I will get one. It will not bother me to continue to boycott the site (mostly) for the rest of this month, and simply focus on this blog to see if there is any opportunity for it to grow and find a place on the Internet where there can be some great discussions about anything and nothing in general, and keep a healthy dialogue of comments and responses.

I will keep anyone interested on how it goes, although I must admit to feeling a little bit like old Jonny Fever at WKRP in Cincinnati.