To pay a blogger off
July 2nd, 2006
You can already read about PayPerPost on several blogs. Here on Mashable, on TechCrunch, and at CNET’s alpha blog. So I’m not going to give you an in-depth review about what the site does, but to give you a basic idea, they offer money to bloggers for writing good reviews about specific companies. I believe this dishonest practice is only for the most greedy and immoral blog writers out there. However, these “sponsorship” types of advertising can be seen in other forms as well.
It almost seems like you can buy pretty much anyone these days. Buy a professional athlete to tell everyone that they LOVE your sports drink. Buy a movie star to wear only your line of clothing. Sony, upon their entry into the American market, used to pay salespeople to specifically recommend their higher priced televisions. Hell, there are even cases with people permanently tattooing advertisements on their own bodies!
Journalists need to be different though; they need to uphold to an honest and, in a perfect world, unbiased code. Bloggers, who are largely not journalists by training, don’t necessarily have to follow the morals that we hope most journalists abide to. Lately a lot of bloggers have been taking advertisers on their sites. In fact, some of the blogs that I’ve linked to at the beginning of this entry, have advertisers on their sites. They have made statements that they don’t approve of PayPerPost, and will never take money to falsely write a good review of a company. While I believe this, I doubt any of them would ever write a scathing review about one of their advertisers–even if it were true.
Note: The writers of the ShoutBlog will never publish editorial content that has been shaped by money received from any outside influence. So don’t even ask!
You can already read about PayPerPost on several blogs. Here on Mashable, on TechCrunch, and at CNET’s alpha blog. So I’m not going to give you an in-depth review about what the site does, but to give you a basic idea, they offer money to bloggers for writing good reviews about specific companies. I believe this dishonest practice is only for the most greedy and immoral blog writers out there. However, these “sponsorship” types of advertising can be seen in other forms as well.
It almost seems like you can buy pretty much anyone these days. Buy a professional athlete to tell everyone that they LOVE your sports drink. Buy a movie star to wear only your line of clothing. Sony, upon their entry into the American market, used to pay salespeople to specifically recommend their higher priced televisions. Hell, there are even cases with people permanently tattooing advertisements on their own bodies!
Journalists need to be different though; they need to uphold to an honest and, in a perfect world, unbiased code. Bloggers, who are largely not journalists by training, don’t necessarily have to follow the morals that we hope most journalists abide to. Lately a lot of bloggers have been taking advertisers on their sites. In fact, some of the blogs that I’ve linked to at the beginning of this entry, have advertisers on their sites. They have made statements that they don’t approve of PayPerPost, and will never take money to falsely write a good review of a company. While I believe this, I doubt any of them would ever write a scathing review about one of their advertisers–even if it were true.
Note: The writers of the ShoutBlog will never publish editorial content that has been shaped by money received from any outside influence. So don’t even ask!
