In the fifteen years of this blog’s existence, I have yet to earn enough money to buy a Coke at the 1909 price advertised above.

Come to think of it, I haven’t made any money at all! In fact, I’ve spent thousands of dollars on music and endless hours researching, writing, and publishing music reviews and haven’t a penny, a sou, or a tenth of a yen to show for it.

Even worse, I deliberately chose not to make any money from this blog! Only an idiot would do that, right?

Let the idiot explain herself.

I love music, and I learn a lot by playing, listening to, and writing about it. My reward is the music itself. Sure, I’ve spent a lot of money on music over the years, but now I have a great collection I can access any time I feel like it (which is pretty much every day). I also love hearing about different perspectives on music from my readers (excluding the few who call me a stupid fucking cunt).

Now, I could make some money to offset the costs by allowing advertisements on altrockchick.com. Permitting advertisements would also increase my readership because commercial sites are more likely to appear at the top of search results. I could expand my audience even further by paying a company like Blaze to place ads on other sites to drive traffic to this site.

I know this stuff because guess what? My work involves marketing—for nonprofits! I know enough about advertising and communication strategy to make me the Queen of the Internet!

And I absolutely refuse to clutter this site or any other site with advertising. Only an idiot would do that, right?

Beyond my personal aversion to fame and celebrity, I think we’ve had enough commercialization and commoditization of music, and I don’t want to validate that trend. I firmly believe that the people who earn the right to make money from music are those who create and play the music. Then again, I do not want to find myself in the position of skewing a review toward the positive because an artist chooses to advertise on my site. When I visit sites like Rolling Stone or Pitchfork, the obvious conflict of interest disgusts me.

So you will never, ever find advertising on altrockchick.com, and I solemnly promise that I will never launch a crowdfunding campaign to make up for my financial losses. What I’ve lost in terms of money is more than compensated by the spiritual reward of immersing myself in music.