Gold and Leveling Guides

The Blogsphere is experiencing its own bit of drama right now with 3 well read, heavy trafficked bloggers putting their Two Copper.

It started with everyone’s favorite Goblin, Gevlon of Greedy Goblin, posting about email conversations between himself and Marko of My Two Copper. Both of these guys run blogs dedicated to making lots and lots of gold in World of Warcraft, and Marko was trying to get Gevlon to advertise for a Gold Guide that Marko made and is trying to sell.

Gevlon called on none other than Tobold as a witness to verify certain parts of his account. Tobold was kind enough to reply with a verification of Gevlon’s account. Marko, of course, had his own reply, which seems to have been taken down of this writing, but I still have a copy in my Feed Reader.

I found the whole thing at least mildly entertaining, which is to say I got a good chuckle out of it. I do hope Gevlon and Marko have some strong spam filters because Gevlon posted a screen shot with both their email address on the blog.

Marko didn’t do anything wrong in trying to market his Intellectual Property, and Gevlon and Tobold were well within their rights to say ‘No’.

But the whole episode got me thinking, and when I get a’thinkin’, I get a’writin’.

I started to ask myself, what I would have done if Marko had approached me.

Now I’m aware this would never happen as Honors Code is small potatoes compared to blogs like World of Matticus, Paladin Schamaldain, Tanking Tips, Greedy Goblin, Just My Two Copper, and Tobold’s MMORPG Blog.

That doesn’t bother me. Oh, I’d like more people to read my thoughts on various issues, but I serve a fairly small niche. If you aren’t into Paladins and Tanking, most of the subject matter of Honors Code will probably not be terribly interesting. That’s okay with me.

I do love the way Gevlon works in his own world view philosophies into his blog. I’d love to do more of that with Honor’s Code without it feeling forced.

Now I don’t blog for money, but I probably would have agreed to do a little advertising for Marko if he had asked. I’ve accepted ad requests in the past. There’s a link in the middle of the page under “Free MMOs” that someone is paid me to put up. It was small and unobtrusive, and didn’t detract from the blog. Plus, it gave me the money enough money to treat the family to MickyDs one night. That’s right guys, make a great blog, stick with it for over two years, and you, too, could make enough to go to McDonald’s one evening!

I’ve also got an ad for Killer Guides which I put all the way on the bottom of the page because I didn’t like the look of it on the top or the side. There’s just something about a banner add that front and center that turns me off about a blog or site when I see it. I’ve made nothing off of it and should probably just take it down.

The other thing that I started thinking about was my own guide. No, I don’t have a Gold Making Guide, but I do have my very popular “Leveling a Paladin in World of Warcraft” guide. It’s the number one most visited page on the site. It was good enough to get a link from the Official World of Warcraft site and get me author status on Tankspot.

I’m very proud of my guide and the work I’ve done to keep it current. I began to ponder if I’d ever charge for my guide which made me think back to why I wrote the guide in the first place.

I was but a wee lad of a Paladin, somewhere around Level 20 when I found a Paladin Leveling guide on the Official Forums. That guide was a huge help to me as a leveled up. As is wont to happen with guides, it went out of date and was not updated again. I wanted to express my appreciation to the writer of that Guide, and pay it forward. I wanted to give back to the Paladin community that had helped me learn how to play the class I’d come to love so much.

So I took it upon myself to write my own guide, and I promised myself that I would keep it up to do date. And I’ve kept that promise to myself. On Thursday, July 5^th, 2007 my guide was first published on HonorsCode. Just this past September, over two years after its initial release, I published the latest most up to date version of the Guide.

The Guide was meant as a way for me to give back to the Paladin community. It was never something to try to make a profit off of. So, no, I would never ever charge for my guide. It will always be free. If someone just absolutely insisted on paying me something for my work, I’d direct them to several fantastic charities like this one, or this one, and ask them to make a donation in my name.