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Dec 06, 2006
A few days ago I’d written about services that pay you to write product reviews on your blog. The two companies right now running such campaigns are PayPerPost and ReviewMe. There was a loud outcry when PayPerPost was launched because some bloggers thought this would violate the sanctity of the blogsphere. I didn’t follow the reactions to ReviewMe. Can blogging-for-pay really affect the way you write on your blog?
Bloggers For Hire has a post on this trend while referring to a ReviewMe sponsored post. Jim Turner of Bloggers for Hire starts with this apocalyptic expression:
My friend Ben, no he did not pay me to be his friend, submitted a review of a Data Deposit Box. Yes, I am somehow contributing to the demise of the Internet by linking a ReviewMe.com review.
I don’t think writing for ReviewMe contributes to the “demise of the Internet”. Internet is thriving and kicking and it is going to do so for a very long time. And if journalists in the mainstream media can get paid for writing “biased” articles, why not bloggers? We should let the readers decide if they want to believe what the blogger has written or not. For instance Jim doesn’t find Ben’s review helpful, well, he can question the way Ben may have written it, but why debunk the entire concept? It should be left on the preference of individual bloggers how they want to use their blogs. After all the concept of blogging stems from the concept of freedom and empowerment.
Technorati Tags: payperpost, reviewme, earn by blogging, professional blogging, blog marketing, new blogging trends
Posted by Amrit | Tags: Blog Publishing, Blogging News, Blogging Trends
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December 6th, 2006 at 6:22 pm
To the point of debunking the entire concept of bought and paid for content. As you can imagine I walk a fine line in this respect since we at Bloggers For Hire actually provide a paid blogger to write copy for blogs for businesses. The fact of a paid opinion is not necessarily easy to distinguish in that sense, but I have been following the reviews being done, and some are supportive others, not. I am more concerned with disclosure of the paid advertisement. I would have not appreciated Ben’s article had I not known he was being paid to provide his thoughts. In this instance, it was about a product I had no interest in, but if he were talking about the latest stroller for babies or something I might buy, his opinion may be persuasive. If he had been paid for that opinion it may not have carried as much weight.
I wanted to tell you also that it took me a while to decide if your title was about religion of the expression of the famous Harry we loved as a Cubs announcer! I like it both ways actually.
December 6th, 2006 at 6:24 pm
December 7th, 2006 at 12:28 am
As for Jim, I don’t think he debunks the whole concept, just continues to question it, which I think is fine.
At the end of the day I don’t have a problem with paid content (I did it after all!) and maybe I’m foolhardy in this respect, but I’m not even hugely concerned with how people tell us their content is paid or not. At the end of the day we’re inundated with advertising and marketing messages and we, as consumers, have to decide what we want to pay attention to.
Sure, I recognize the slippery slope of paid content where you don’t tell people it’s paid but I think it’s probably an overblown issue by the blogosphere.
December 7th, 2006 at 4:52 am