You might be asking, “Will the Tangential ever have advertising?” While we know that you cannot wait for the day when your posts are framed by sexy but authentic-looking girls in leotards and ice skating suits, letting you know that people who shop at American Apparel also enjoy our brand of humor, that day is far off. First of all, we don’t know where those girls could crawl, split and lean over on our website. There’s just not space. But in all reality, there are better ways to monetize than banner ads. This is 2011, after all. Here are some of our more innovative monetization plans:

1. Open a toll road
You can pay for the shrimp and white wine of plenty of bloggers just by opening a toll road. We are thinking Uptown’s Lyndale Avenue would be a good spot, since there are ribs on one end the only sake brewery restaurant outside of Japan (for real) on the other. We know everyone hates toll roads, so we promise we’d make it fun. First of all, the tolls would be operated by teenage girls in bikinis, and occasionally we’d take a break from blogging about Justin Bieber to hose them down with Orange Fanta. They’d hold giant signs that say, “Toll Road <3 <3!” and every day at noon organize a flash mob that sings “Single Ladies.” I know that song is totally over, but they’re only 16, and they don’t know how to be cool yet. Lay off ‘em.

2. Sell market research reports
Marketers are already pouring over our articles because they closely examine the psyche of twentysomething people who spend outside their means. We are a golden demographic, and we want to exploit that. Eventually when we publish something like, “How to Let Your Shoes Communicate What Music Blogs You Do and Do Not Read,” we will add a gated entry, so that people need to give us their credit card and answer a captcha that proves they are indeed marketers, like a complete-the-word for “in____tivize.” (This time we’ll give it away: Incentivize.)

3. Licence our personal lives to MTV
You know that show that’s always advertised on MTV called, “My Life as Liz,” where she says something like, “I didn’t get much done other than making a lot of AWESOME FACES!” and then proceeds to smirk and shit-grin upside-down into the camera? Then she goes and plays guitar and pushes her red bangs out of her eyes and makes an awesome face about being confused about her two crushes, one who is an “indie artist boy” and one who likes comics? Well, I promise we are not more annoying than she is. We could have a show. It would involve Jay Gabler wondering if he’s DTF or not, and Sarah Heuer taking Karkov shots and sexually harassing people at a “sober rave.” Plus, there’d be scenes of Jason Zabel’s boyfriend Jordan, watching “The Human Centipede” outtakes with his mom. OK not that exciting, but better than “My Life as Liz” right? Please?

-Speaking of MTV, Becky Lang is excited for “Beavis and Butthead” to return, but prepared for disappointment.