The Great Barter Mistake of Bloggers

I kick myself for not catching it before, but let me cite three bloggers:

Silvio Canto
Roosh
Kerry Lutz

I've had dealings with all three and our dealings have revolved around our blogs.  And for those of you who are bloggers yourselves you know that blogging is an accidental career.  You don't set out and declare to the world,

"I'm going to be the best damn blogger the world has ever seen!!!!"

You don't "Major in Blogging" (though no doubt the worthless world of Academia will come up with a "Bachelors of Arts in Blogging" sometime soon). 

You also know once you start blogging any hope of having a "normal" or "real" career is shot.  You made yourself public.  You've stated your positions.  You DARED to exercise your 1st Amendment rights to free speech and thus Corporate/Employer America will have nothing to do with you. 

And therefore we congregate on teh interwebz, capitalizing on our freedom to do as we please, write books, plug our wares and do whatever we have to do to avoid "crawling back" to corporate America to grant us another 6 months of employment merely to recapitalize our personal balance sheet, only to tell them to f$ck off as we have too much self respect and dignity to tolerate their BS. 

But while we congregate we also scheme. And in scheming we make some observations.  Observations that help people stay afloat in the blogging world and independent of any employer or master.

And boy, did I come up with a doozy of an observation.

My observation today was one of needlessly paying taxes.  Usually you are approached or would like to approach a blogger with significant internet presence to help advertise your wares.  They usually say "$200 for a sidebar image" or "$100 for a post dedicated to your product" or "$25 and i'll mention you in the podcast." Payment is usually done by Paypal, check or some other electronically, and thus, taxable means.

But then Silvio made an interesting observation.

"Why don't you just plug my stuff and I plug yours?"

The simplicity is brilliance.

Not only does Silvio NOT have to pay taxes on the advertising I paid him, I don't have to pay taxes on advertising he's done for me.

In other words, the idea of charging a fellow blogger for advertising is stupid.  We merely make a transaction recordable and thereby TAXABLE and let Uncle Sam and Step-Mom State in on our business.  Instead, bloggers should use their cache as currency and merely agree to help support, prop, advertise and promote other bloggers.  i.e.-traffic is currency, and a non-taxable one at that.

So before you think about approaching another blogger and saying, "Hey, how much to advertise on your site?"

Why not approach and say, "Hey, I'll plug yours if you plug mine."

Not only would it save us taxes, it would piss off Barry.