So I just signed up with Pay Per Post (PPP) maybe a week ago and so far I’m pretty happy with it. For those of you who aren’t familiar with the service, it’s essentially a way for advertisers to generate buzz, to promote their products and services, or for bloggers to get blog reviews (via the badges at the end of each post, for example). This is done mainly through bloggers who are paid to write sponsored posts for advertisers. And it’s a great way for bloggers to make a little extra cash.
Well I was talking to Steve the other day about how I signed up and he mentioned a concern which I found very interesting.
He contends that posting a paid link violates the trust of your readers. Basically, as a reader you are trusting the author to post content that he or she thinks is relevant or interesting in some way. One may not actually endorse a sponsored product or service that they are blogging about, however. I guess it would be like reading a supposedly conservative newspaper and finding out that they had been taking money from liberal presidental candidates in return for a little more buzz than usual. It just feels wrong.
On the other hand, I’ve never blogged about anything that I wouldn’t have blogged about anyway. There are always so many different opportunities to choose from that it’s really easy to fit something into whatever topic your blog may be about. I for one would never compromise the quality of my posts for the sake of an extra post or two and I don’t get the impression that many of the bloggers signed up on Pay Per Post would either. What’s more is that PPP has some pretty good guidelines regarding how many paid posts can be posted in a day and how they must be disclosed. I chose to post a general disclosure policy but you can also choose to do an in-post disclosure if the advertiser permits it.
So I’d love to know what you think. What are your thoughts about paid posting? What about blogging for money in general? Do you want to sign up 
2 Comments
I feel pay per post is the differnce between a friend mentioning the great service they received from their insurance company versus trying to sell you the same insurance.
It’s really hard to divorce self interest from genuinely useful material and the presence of their icon / disclosure doesn’t really reduce that concern for the reasons below.
Regardless of the probity of the poster and their belief that they are not influenced by the system I don’t believe that to be the case.
If there were to be an ongoing effort to demonstrate to the contrary just how little effect the paid content is having could end up being more trouble than it’s worth.
I love people making money of their passion and knowledge, I’m all in favor of pay per post doing similar but I’ve always had issues with the idea that the introduction of money,into any arena, has no effect.
If it truly had zero effect on what was going to appear online the company wouldn’t be in business and you wouldn’t have written this post.
Wow excellent comments, John.
It’s funny what a difference between the blog world and the print world there is. In print it goes almost entirely unnoticed when someone writes an editorial about a product (not something hugely important such as the presidential candidates) that they have been paid to endorse. I suppose that one of the wonderful things about blogging is the honesty and trust that comes naturally from the community that surrounds each blog.
Thanks for your insightful comments on the topic. I hope to hear from you again!