A different kind of selfish

Another day, another whole lotta thinking about me. Such is the life of the truly selfish, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. And as is often the case, I’ve been thinking about myself and my blog.

When I mention to people that I maintain a sewing blog, often the first thing they ask is whether a lot of people visit. I don’t do any rigorous stats tracking, but I say that it seems to be quite a lot of traffic these days. The next thing they ask is, “Do you make a lot of money off of your ads?” And when I tell them that I don’t do paid ads or sponsors, they are surprised at the wasted opportunity. Similarly, I’m often asked by other sewers why I give my patterns away for free rather than trying to sell them. Why not be more… selfish?

Here’s the thing- I have no moral or philosophical objection to people making money off of their blogs or sewing. Quite the contrary in fact- I love knowing that people are able to leverage their beloved activity in a way that benefits themselves, and sometimes even supports them. You know how I feel about doing things for your own personal benefit. Passionate. And ads on blogs don’t bother me at all (so long as they are sitting there quietly and not popping up windows or obscuring the content that I want to see). I even appreciate a nicely curated ad that was chosen because it might be interesting or relevant to me. Would I ever even have heard of ModCloth or any number of independent vintage pattern companies if not for these little ads? People who blog are putting something out there for others, trying to make a contribution, so why not get a little something in return?

So why don’t *I* advertise on my blog then?  And why don’t I charge money for my pattern downloads?  The answer is simple (and you should have guessed it by now if you’ve ever visited this blog before): SELFISHNESS. Sewing and blogging are two of my primary free time activities, and the less of a “job” it is to me, the better. And if I’m getting paid for it, it becomes kind of a job in my mind, and with that comes a sense of responsibility and accountability, a.k.a. YUCK and YUCK. Perhaps no one else would feel that I was accountable, but I would. As it is, I try to post at least a few times a week, but as you know, life (and sometimes extraterrestrial life) can get in the way, and maybe there will come a time when I just don’t feel like writing or sewing for a whole month. Or six. I don’t want to worry about whether my advertisers feel like they’re getting their money’s worth, or whether they’re being cheated, and I certainly don’t want that worry to be my motivation to maintain a certain quality or frequency of posts. If I feel like writing crap or hibernating, that’s up to me :D

Same deal with patterns- I’m an amateur drafter, and an even more amateur grader. As it stands now, you get the pattern for free and if you think it stinks, well tough noogies for you- I warned you to sew it at your own risk, and guess what? It was FREE. That’ll teach you to download free stuff off the internet :) It doesn’t fit right, it doesn’t look right, why doesn’t it come in size 38? What do you want me to do, give you your $0 back and head back to the drafting table to fix your customer service issue?  Ha. I’m obviously exaggerating a little bit here, but I think this should give you an idea as to why I am so very very NOT interested in charging money for my patterns ;) (And seriously, who would pay $5 for a pattern download by an acknowledged amateur drafter? Not me.)

That pretty much sums it up- the whole lack of commercial features on my blog is driven not by any holier-than-thou attitude towards profiting, but instead out of pure and simple selfishness, self-centeredness, and lack of responsibility! I won’t promise it will always be this way- circumstances and priorities may change. But for now, this is how it stands. Selfish, lazy, and all about me and my own personal glorification.

You might be thinking, “Ah, but Selfish, what about your Selfish Seamstress Store? You sell things for charity, which seems like both a blog-related responsibility AND unselfish!” I have gotten comments to that extent before, and all I can say is that you greatly, greatly misunderstand the motivation behind that. You hear the word “donate” and you think of it as altruism. I think of it as taking advantage the masses whom I have ensnared into reading my blog, and manipulating them into doing things to make the world a little bit more into the world that I want it to be. And making sure they think about me every time they drink their coffee. Shameless self promotion. See how that works?  Now go buy some mugs and t-shirts to support St. Jude’s Children’s Research Hospital. Do as I command!

[Note: If you are suddenly feeling like this whole post was actually one long roundabout ad, you would be correct. Hahaha. You think I zig?  I zag!]