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# $10 Per Post and Other Delusions
- URL: https://ksnk.media/10-per-post-and-other-delusions/
- Published: 2026-05-08T00:00:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-05-15T10:09:56.000Z
- Description: Why paying $10 per post for blog promotion is a waste of money for personal bloggers. The difference between business content marketing and authentic writing.
- Author: Aleksandr Kosenko
- Tags: Blog, Blogging Outside Format

*Blogging Outside Format. A Manifesto, Post #5/14*

I paid for ads. $10 per post on NotionSkull — built-in Instagram promotion. That was client acquisition money, not blog growth money. A business expense, not vanity.

And it worked. When you're making roughly $1,000 from a new client, spending $100 to get them makes sense. The math is simple. You don't have to wait for organic shares to slowly grow your audience. Pay for clients today — get them today. If you're lucky.

That last part matters.

## No guarantees

Plenty of channels stuffed with bots. Plenty of admins who are flaky assholes. Ad exchanges and agencies are either a headache or expensive. Usually both. Don't stumble into this solo — talk to someone who's been burned before. There's a ton of platform-specific knowledge that changes by the month.

Organic reach has collapsed everywhere. Instagram — 3.5%. Facebook — 1.3%. LinkedIn — down 60% from its peak. Paid promotion became the only path to visibility. For a business, that's fine. For a personal blog, it's a trap.

## Business blog vs. personal blog

Here's when paid ads actually make sense:

**Business blog.** You make money from clients. Each new client pays back the ad spend. This isn't promoting a blog — it's marketing through writing. ROI is measurable.

**Media project.** You need people who'll see the ads you're going to sell later. Then yes — run ads, run giveaways, grow the numbers.

Giveaways work for broad-appeal channels — tech, politics, lifestyle. When anyone who shows up is a valid reader. But be ready: after a giveaway, a huge chunk of those new people will leave. That's normal, but it can look like a scam signal to the platform.

**Personal blog?** That money is better spent on the craft, not the promotion. A bought audience didn't show up out of love. They'll leave the moment a post doesn't match what they expected.

## If I had the money

If I had enough money — I'd just do the blog. If I didn't need to work to live — I'd write. And learn to write better. And get better at it.

I wouldn't buy ads. Wouldn't hire a social media manager. Wouldn't run giveaways.

I'd just write. Every day. Get better.

This isn't about ads being evil. Ads are a tool. But for a personal blog, the best tool is time spent writing. Ten dollars per post won't make the text feel alive. A thousand hours of practice will.

Email marketing returns $36 for every dollar spent. Impressive? Sure — if you're running marketing. Funnels, conversions, CTAs. That's not "I wrote something honest and want people to read it." There's no formula for the second thing. Just time and honesty.