On the PayPerPost debate

Oct 09, 2006

There is this website called PayPerPost that pays bloggers to write posts according to guidelines given by the PayPerpost advertisers. You can read the implications of such a blogging venture here and here.

Initially I didn’t understand what the fuss was all about. After all there are many websites, for instance Epinions, that pay you for writing reviews. But according to Stowe Boyd:

I agree with Jason that paying people to blog about (and link to) products without disclosure of the money involved is deceptive splogging. This is another attempt to monetize the implicit trust built into the blogosphere’s atmosphere of trust: this only works so long as people believe that the links are honest. Once that trust is lost, the value of the links will plummet, from $7 or so, down to pennies, if that.

Do readers really mistrust bloggers who are paid to write product reviews or other sort of stuff? There could be a chance. I don’t write product reviews on any of my blogs – I do sometimes write book reviews and then link them to my Amazon affiliate links – but my views are totally my views and nobody is paying me to write them.

A long time ago when people started using websites to earn money there were widespread protests from the initial Internet users. Money is still a dirty word among many online circles and bloggers are prominent among them. I don’t find anything “evil” in the PayPerPost model even though I don’t agree with the model. Bloggers are prone to writing favorable posts if they are paid to write by the companies and as the dissenting bloggers have mentioned, this dents the trust of the readers. But then, if people can use their blogs for porn, why not post-whoring?