Adapted from: Filmsite
Thanks to the MarketingPilgrim, for enlightening us about a new web site called PayPerPost.
Look out folks! It’s an Invasion of the Blogger Snatchers.
What you read on some blogs may be blog porn. That is, someone paid the blogger to write a friendly post about their product or service. Has citizen journalism been corrupted? Will blogs lose credibility? How can we trust an opinion or point of view that someone was paid to give?
Altough this idea is not “new” - read Bloglogic and Ensight - the idea resembles a PPC (Pay Per Click) type of advertising. By using PayPerPost, advertisers can target Niche blogs and a niche audience just like Google Ad Words or Adsense advertisers do. I don’t think that bloggers should accept money from someone to blog favorably about them, their product or their service. The blogger may lose credibility in some peoples’ eyes if they find out what they are doing. The larger issue is what happens when someone pays a blogger to write an unfavorable post about a competitor? Will this pimped out blogger do it? Will they take a chance and burn someone for money? It’s a lot easier to write a fluff piece than it is to write a barn burner. I wonder if that issue has ever come up in PayPerPosts’ short history?
For more details about Pay Per Post, please read this interesting article from Business Week.
FOR THE RECORD: sellsius° is proud to offer you our own original opinions, commentary, interpretations and ideas. We will not be compromised!
I am with you. I cannot see writing a post, providing an opinion and not telling readers that someone is paying me specifically to do it. It’s only a matter of time until someone (not me) starts a site that lists all of the blogs participating in this scheme and kills their credibility.
Just my opinion.
- Jay
dumblittleman.com
Certainly many bloggers will be attracted to the bait. The questions is will they keep it secret or be upfront with their readers. Will it make a difference?
People understand seeing traditional ads on websites & now blogs but this is a bit unconventional ===sort of like the paid spokeman type of advertising.
It will be interestign to see who can make this work & how—it seems like a tough “row to hoe”.
Thanks for your comment Jay.
jay - p.s. we’d love to see someone creates that “List” ….please let us know if you find one…
blog on!
-rdb°
What I would love is to see a product that is advertised on a blog, challenged and debated on the same blog. Open season on all. Separate the writer from the marketer even in one man companies. Larry Cragun
larry - i agree. assuming that a blogger who gets paid to advertise about a product or service allows comments, i see no reason why a meaningful discussion wouldn’t take place. the real question is whether or not they are being paid to post. will they say that this is a paid post? haven’t seen anyone do that yet.
in our case, sometimes we discuss useful features on our blog that our website will provide our members. i’m sure after our launch we’ll have a healthy discussion on our blog about what our community thinks. actually, we’re looking forward to it!
you may have noticed, but we don’t have any sponsored ads or google adsense on our blog. all the products, services or companies that we have discussed or highlighted on our blog were done because we thought that our viewers would find them useful or interesting. NO PAID ADVERTISEMENTS HERE BABY!
grassroots all the way……….
-rdb°