I’ve been blogging for a long time. My first blog post was back in 2000, where I basically bitched about writing papers for college and apologized for not blogging more. Then I started again in 2004 and ranted about things that bugged me. There was no such thing as “followers.” People didn’t subscribe to RSS. I didn’t care if I had readers because I was doing it for myself.

In November of 2006 I decided to start blogging about our wedding planning since the majority of my friends and family lived elsewhere. Blogged Bliss was born. After the wedding was over, my good friend A inspired me to keep the blog going, and it turned into my outlet for everything. An outlet of course, that my friends and family could read.

February 2009 and we’re trying to get knocked up. I start a new blog. A secret blog where I can complain about how long it’s taking us to get it done. And then I get pregnant in the first month. Trying to conceive blog turns into pregnancy blog. Secret turns public. Over time, I acquire around 70 followers and around 100 RSS subscribers. Then I have Abby and pregnancy blog makes no sense anymore, so I move all my posts and my bad little self back to Blogged Bliss.

So there, a brief history.

Now, getting to my main point. My moral struggles with blogging, followers and giveaways.

My blog now has just shy of 50 followers and a bunch of RSS subscribers. (Where did that 20 go from my other blog? Come back!) Anyway, I obviously would like for more readers. I think most every blogger’s dream is for someone to find their blog and pay them billions of dollars in ad revenue so that they don’t have to work anymore. Right? Some bloggers are just lucky enough to have enough readers where companies send them items to review and or give away and that’s totally awesome. I hope I get to that point some day.

But some bloggers have giveaways with items they purchase on their own…and to enter the giveaway you must follow the blog, vote for them at either of the sites on the right or stand on their heads or something. That’s fine for the people that do that. I don’t think that I could. Gaining “followers” based solely on something you bought to give away seems like cheating. I want people to read my blog because they like what I have to say, not because of the off-chance I might give away some fancy-ass diaper bag.

Of course, these blogs then have eleventy billion followers and top ten listings in the “Top” blogs. They make me a little sad when I see my little following, but I feel better knowing that my peeps are there because they wanna be. They won’t ignore most of my posts because the word “Giveaway” isn’t in the title.

Don’t get me wrong, if hell freezes over tomorrow and some company was all – “DOOODE. Here’s this awesome toy we want you to review and we’ll send you one to giveaway to your readers,” of course I’d do it. Because it was genuine. I just don’t agree with the other practice.

To each their own, though.

What are your thoughts on giveaways?