Blogging For Dollars At The Grapevine

So after being on hiatus for 3 months, Coconut Grove Grapevine announced on Wednesday that he was returning but there was going to be some changes.

I will charge to have an event or story posted here. There are thousands of people coming here daily to read that stuff. It's a commodity. I am going to capitalize on it, why? Because it's the American way, besides, I need to pay my bills.

I'll work up a payment structure and charge for various things like flyers, press releases, even charge a premium if you actually want my presence and me to physically cover the event. I have my stories now in the Huffington Post, The Miami Herald, The Examiner, various comic strip blogs (I still am doing Tomversation, my comic strip) and I'll share stories with those publications, too.

I'll let you know what's up as soon as I figure it out. But I will require payment in advance, through Paypal or credit card and I will charge for coverage of everything, I think after eight years of doing this as a hobby, which benefited every single person and business in Coconut Grove, it is now my time to benefit.

The Grapevine elaborated a little more on this new business model on Thursday...

This is the place to share your store opening news or bar crawl news. It's the place to share your last party pictures and things like that. The Herald and other publications pick up my feeds, so you may be seen in more than just this page of the Grapevine, but either way, if you want your event, party, business to be noticed. This is the place now.

[...]

I am running the Grapevine as a business now, after eight years of being a community service, it's time to make a living at it. Event organizers, please be sure to add the Grapevine into your marketing plans, you'll need to send us content and photos, after all, if it's in the Grapevine it is so. You want to make your event "so."

I think I would call that "blogvertising."

Okay, being paid for mentioning a restaurant, product or event is not exactly unheard of in the blogging world and really isn't considered that unusual as long as there's full disclosure, but it sounds like that's all Coconut Grove Grapevine is going to be from this point on.  Which really makes me ask myself if what Coconut Grove Grapevine is doing can even be considered "blogging" any more.

That's an easy one: No.

As a result, Coconut Grove Grapevine won't be returning to the SFDB blogroll. We wish it well.


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