Matthew Wayne Selznick

Thanks to the various ways I keep up with mentions of me around the Interwebs, I discovered that Tee Morris finally re-did his website and added a blog! He very kindly listed me in his “Favorite Authors” blogroll; I dutifully subscribed to the blog. Reminds me that I need to go through my feeds and update my own blogroll to match what I’m really reading…

So Tee wrote today about a new service, Magpie, that embeds advertisements in your Twitter feed. Each advertisement is clearly marked with a “#magpie:” tag. From what he wrote, he’s opted to not utilize the service and may be turning his back on as much as five thousand dollars a month because he doesn’t want his personal brand to be “Less signal, more noise.”

I respect and understand Tee’s decision, especially considering that he’s been supporting himself and his family as a freelance consultant, public speaker, and instructor for some time now.

Me, on the other hand… I am a very new freelancer, newly unemployed… and the multiples streams of income I do have are more like trickles. I have to admit… the idea of making a four figure income by doing nothing more than allowing my every twentieth tweet to be an advertisement gave me pause. After all, the ultimate goal is to make enough money so that I can focus entirely on making things, right?

I’m not against monetization. I’ve already taken the step of adding two Project Wonderful ad spaces to this site — one on the right sidebar and one at the bottom of every page — and I put a Google adsense block at the bottom of the front page. These bring me a very, very tiny income — Project Wonderful is averaging about three cents per day, and it’s too soon to say about the AdSense, but it’s more like pennies per year. I also utilize affiliate links for every book, movie, and cd I talk about in this blog.

I’ve also got my first book, “Brave Men Run — A Novel of the Sovereign Era,” out there in a number of different formats. I’m still earning back the advance on the paperback edition, but the iPhone and Kindle editions are bringing in a little bit every month or so. And I’ll have another writing-related project to announce very, very soon that may also generate some income.

Put all of that together, though, and it’s nowhere near a living wage… and the need to bring in a living wage is weighing on me, dear reader, I cannot deny it. The stress is keeping me from working on “Pilgrimage,” the next book in the Sovereign Era cycle, because most of my time spent in front of a computer these days is dedicated to looking for work. So… what about Magpie?

My personal philosophy regarding the people I follow on Twitter is: I will follow anyone who follows me, as long as they post real stuff the majority of the time. I don’t mind self-promoters if now and then they post something they’re not promoting — tell me what you had for breakfast, let me see you replying to other folks, throw up a link to something you love, heck, even RickRoll me… just let me know you’re human, and we’re good.

Similarly, I use twitter like a cross between a casual conversation and a party line… and now and then, I blatantly hype something I’m doing or specifically call my followers to action. I believe my signal to noise ratio is 100:0 — others may disagree, but if you’re interested in following my tweets, you’re interested in me, so you’re probably interested in my endeavors.

So… again, what about Magpie?

Well. If you’re interested in me, I hope you’re interested in my ability to create things — books, short stories, music and so on. I can only make things if I’m able to pay my bills. Magpie will, potentially, help me pay my bills.

The bottom line is: if you follow me on Twitter (please do) then are you willing to have one out of twenty of my tweets be an advertisement… knowing that the advertisement is helping ease my financial situation?

Maybe not. Maybe.

Like I’ve done before when it comes to a big decision that impacts the way you and I interact, I need to know what you think. Here’s a handy poll (Reading via RSS? Please visit the site to vote):

Update: The poll is closed. 40 people responded.

I really want to hear what you think. I’ll run the poll through November 26, 2008 or until I get 100 respondents, yea or nay. Your participation will be instrumental in my decision making, so if you care about our relationship on Twitter, please let me know your opinion in the poll. I also hope you’ll elaborate on your opinion in the comments section of this post.

Thanks very much, everyone!

Update on November 30, 2008: After eleven days of polling and forty respondants, here are the results:

Thanks for participating, and thanks for your comments!