This came up during an MSN conversation today -

people charging for making their entire blog post about a person's service/site

It was quoted on TechCrunch that PayPerPost has raised $3 million in venture funding. What PayPerPost does is allow advertisers to buy a blog post – often referred to as a paid plug. Instead of buying normal banner advertising, the advertiser would pay the blogger to write about their product or service. This of course raises many ethics and credibility issues. It is obvious that anyone paying for a blog post will want positive things said about his or her product.

There has been a huge outcry about this...that blogs who do this will lose all credibility, that worthwhile blogs won't participate anyway etc.

However, does a newspaper lose credibility because of advertorials, do prominent people lose face and cred for promoting everything from cars to shoes to fast foods?

I think the issue has been presented to much in black and white. There is a lot of grey areas there. For instance, the blog person having to have a belief or trust in the product/service - I bet those who sponsor products on TV generally need to be convinced first.

What about you - would you write about a product service positively for money?

matte wrote:

What about you - would you write about a product service positively for money?

If I hire a copywriter to put together some promotional text for a site - that's pretty much what he/she is doing.

As for the blogs, I can see this coming full circle and ending up with people paying people to write other websites for them.

Just like MFA sites started to kill AdSense, but made some people very rich first, I can see some advertisers getting a good deal and some bloggers getting some good money. - but that's in today's blogging climate

When everyone jumps on the bandwagon, the bandwagon will break down (as usual). We will start to see poor blogs, more machine generated pages, etc etc.

In conclusion I think it will be a fad that leaves something very powerful with no credibility

more machine generated pages

The bloggosphere is full of them now - tens of thousands of spam blogs.

But what about someone - via an affiliate program - writing a 'review' of a product and then providing a link so as to make an affiliate sale? Does this fall into the same category as paid reviews for a thirs party?

Never really thought of it.

Most of my revenue come from affiliate marketing, but it's less of a review, and more of a contextual ad next to some genuine info.

I know a young lady who just started this last week; I thought it was an odd concept, but looks like it may be catching on -- will be interesting to see how it all plays out.

matte wrote:

What about you - would you write about a product service positively for money?

Pay me $5 Million to endorse Nike Shoes and I dont care if they fall apart within a week - I still have my $5 Million.

Greed is everywhere - and it brings credibility from good sites/products/services/companies down. Genuine reviews and endorsements are replaced by the greedy who get paid to talk positive. Sad but True.

You'd have to write more to convince me for $5Mil...

the average pay to write is $3 - range is $2.50-9.00, so this implies short posts.
I can see a rise in use of offshore writing services...

In my blog, I review products for a certain targeted market. The vendors send me their product and I test them out here at home, write up a review and then mention the product in my blog if I believe in it.  This has been successful for the vendors, who do get ordersfrom the mention. I think payment by product is enough. Because there is so much greed on the internet now that it cheapens the website involved.

tell me country - if you had the opportunity to insert an affiliate link would you do it?

matte wrote:

tell me country - if you had the opportunity to insert an affiliate link would you do it?

I would and I have done so.

A few months ago, I read a story about Wal-Mart's internet marketing strategy. They had tested the "pay a blogger for exposure" technique, and they had experienced great results.

According to the news story, Wal-Mart killed most of their mainstream internet advertising after the test, and they pushed the majority of their paid advertising to the "pay a blogger for exposure" technique.

If a Fortune 500 company is doing it, why would others not do it?

The reporter said that Wal-Mart was not telling bloggers what to write. So theoretically, the blogger could write about them positively and negatively, and it would not matter to them.

It makes me wonder if Ben Stein has his own blog. ;-)

If you watch Fox Business News, and you see the shows where Ben Stein is on of the financial talking heads, you will soon pick up on the fact that Ben has a very positive opinion of Wal-Mart, and he is not afraid to have a positive opinion. When Ben Stein has a positive comment about Wal-Mart, his words are actually heard around the world in many countries.

It is all a matter of trusted authority. If the reader trusts the blogger's opinion, then the technique will work. If the blogger is the owner of a spamblog, it will be money thrown away by the marketer.

well I don't think blogs stand to lose any credibility as blogs are for the most part no more credible than forum postings or guestbook comments

it will be interesting to see if this doesn't lead to searches discounting blogs even more - which as far as I'm concerned can really only be a good thing

i don't have a problem with blogs, yeah the net is littered with millions of them yet at the same time there are pictures of ugly fat headed bloated babies, i find the latter more offensive.

when gets me is the spam and the junk and the ease of automating a load of blog posts, so many of googles results go through to blogger.com then redirect through to another page. that's the bit that's out of order and spoils it for everyone.

blogs can be a fab content management system, take a look at the workings of wordpress, the plugins and themes and the ease with which you can write your own plugins. it's great and that's the positive side of it all, it enables non techy, non web savvy people to publish content that in many cases comes close to standards and as a form of expression i can't knock 'em.

still, it's all opinion and hot air, i laughed yesterday when i saw a premium sms company with a system to bill people each time your RSS feed updates, i just though anyone who cares would just subscribe to that and other feeds anyway through a desktop reader.

as for being paid to promote a product, why not. i spent ten years in commercial radio and have had so many free products in exchange for on-air mentions it's untrue. it's commonplace offline to get 'personal endorsements', why not online too?

so on the wal mart example, how/why do people write about products - just customers who happen to have bought them??  I'd be surprised if that was the case otherwise the product review feature on so many sites would have reviews, yet they are generally void of any content.

And for the ones paid to write - are they given blurb or a prduct or...

I agree with mobtex - (though we did have a huge 'cash for comment scandal he in Oz a few years back on radio jocks being positive  about comments and taking money under the table) but maybe if there was a line on the blog that said "this is a paid for commentary  but we are selective in our  endorsements" or such (poor wording I know...)