Friday, November 10, 2006

Paid Blog Posts?

Patrick Gavin’s ReviewMe.com is live now. It’s a service for bloggers to earn some extra spare change by reviewing services or products in their blogs... solving (among many other things!) the problem of banner blindness, while introducing (among many other things!) the problem of mixed content/ advertising. What happens is that you as blogger sign up for the service and are then offered to review certain products, with each review earning you from $20 to $200. You can pick which products you like to review, e.g. to pick only what you deem relevant for your blog community.

Patrick once asked me to consult him (paid!) on how he can make such a service as ethical as possible, and I’m happy they decided to include two points: bloggers must disclose they’re getting paid for each review, and they can write anything they want – positive or negative – and still get paid. Nevertheless, I’m sure this is not for everyone, and I’m still undecided on the morals of such a thing. What does everyone else think? I tend to lean on the side of “still nothing for great blogs,” but I’m not sure – where do you find this fits in the gradient of blog ethics from “do” to “don’t"? (I included the image above to show this gradient as starting point, not so much to place individual items into final positions... as that seems almost impossible.)

Paid Blog Posts? by Philipp Lenssen | Comments (49)

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