I am at a turning point or crossroads in my blogging. I received an email from our website’s hosting service and it was an offer to renew soon before the price goes up.

I had mistakenly assumed that the renewal option was for the price we had last paid for hosting. I was unawares that the cost had gone up to almost double.

Momentary panic-stricken fretting as to whether it’s worth to keep on doing this ensued. “This” as regarding this particular blog? Not really, as I don’t blog here much for now; the potential uses for this blog were probably mostly in the future. But my wife and I have four sites. The hosting is through BlueHost, and they offer competitive packages versus the rest and they excel at one thing: offering multiple domain names per account. This enables us to host all four of our sites through them. My primary blogging effort, Sober Catholic, is worth the cost (at least my wife thinks so 😉 ) and will thus go on. As it won’t reduce costs to quit this blog, this will continue, too.

However, the doubling of the hosting costs did bring to the forefront of my conscience one thing. How serious am I at all this? One good thing about money is that it is a great motivator. One bad thing about money is that it is a great motivator. Money is the motivator for too many things.

So as the old saying goes, “It is time to fish or cut bait.” If we are to pay the hosting fees now as well as the domain name fees later before they expire, I have to make this worthwhile. I have to use this more to justify the costs. I know I have said countless times before (mostly on Sober Catholic) about “blogging more often,” but that was a battle between myself and an inner demon, discipline. And in those battles the consequences were mostly interior ravages and self-esteem issues. But now an element from the Real World has entered the fray. Money.

I will also explore ways to “monetize” this thing. And with that goes more blogging on it as monetization efforts are pointless unless there’s activity to draw people.

The turning point. Or crossroads. Continuing to plug away.

(Donations accepted, please see the PayPal link up above. If you’re amongst the people who donated in June 2013 when we were last up for hosting renewal, you needn’t contribute again.)

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