Paid to Blog: Mountain or Molehill?
An Open Letter to Marshall Kirkpatrick at TechCrunch
“PayPerPost.com [is] a marketplace for companies to connect with bloggers who are willing to blog about a product - for a price … Is this a bad joke designed to torpedo the blogosphere’s credibility in general? … If we’re all trying to negotiate a space between Hollywood and mainstream journalism, this is taking things way too far towards the most insipid parts of Hollywood.” - Marshall Kirkpatrick in TechCrunch’s “PayPerPost.com offers to sell your soul“
Marshall,
The idea of PayPerPost really shouldn’t be so shocking to you. I see this as coming down to two core issues:
Issue #1: Free Enterprise
Companies looking to promote their products and services pay for ads in newspapers, radio spots, and TV commercials. They pay for ads at movie theaters. They pay celebrities to endorse their products. They pay event staffing companies to hire pretty college girls to hand out freebies at shopping malls. They pay grocery stores to print coupons on the back of your receipt, and pay the post office to deliver junk mail to your mailbox. Some of them even pay spammers and spyware companies.
So my question back to you is: Why wouldn’t companies hire bloggers? (Not why shouldn’t.) In the world of free enterprise, you pay to get your name out among the people who will buy your stuff. The blogosphere is a logical, cheap way to generate name recognition and build a network of “reliable” references. I’m not saying this is a good thing for society or for bloggers, just that it seems to be a logical extension of marketplace penetration.
Issue #2: A-Listers Have Unique Concerns
This discussion goes to a deeper issue, I believe, about the credibility of bloggers in general. I think you’re looking at this from an “A-List” perspective. Your readership and the revenues generated from traffic to TechCrunch depend on how people perceive your impartiality. Getting paid to do reviews would severely damage your credibility in the blogosphere. You’re on top, and with that status comes the traffic you need to generate revenue. (I counted 7 ads on the page surrounding your post.) Be honest: you get paid to write.
The little guys, in the meantime, don’t enjoy your status, your traffic, or your revenue streams. They blog because they want to express themselves, they aspire to get where you are, or they are passionate about something. (Or they want to talk about their cat… sigh.) I’m willing to bet the average no-name blogger would love to get paid to write. Nothing validates self-expression quite so well as fame or fortune. PayPerPost may be a temptation for some. So, the D-listers and the Z-listers will get paid to post, and they audience they reach in a lifetime will be less than the number of people who just read your article.
Personally, my own reputation is worth more to me than PayToPost, so I wouldn’t bother it.
The Bad News
The blogosphere doesn’t have “general credibility” to be torpedoed. The mainstream media doesn’t take you, as a blogger, seriously, regardless of what list you are on. Try as you might, you will always be lumped in with the unwashed masses of B- through Z-list bloggers. PayPerPost is just further “proof” to the mainstream media that blogging is no different than airing opinions around the water cooler.
The Good News
Pay-per-posters aren’t going to indirectly destroy your personal credibility within the blogosphere. All you have to do is declare you don’t take money for reviews, and you are protected. Express outrage at the idea, and you’re even better protected. You’ve done that, so the problem is solved.
- Mark
June 30th, 2006 at 15:16
Some fair thoughts here. Will try to read closer later. be well, Marshall
June 30th, 2006 at 23:51
I’ll make a comment coming from the perspective of a “Z lister.”
Be up front with your readers. As someone with a very narrow blog about something I’m passionate about (design), I know most of the people that read it personally. I’m not about to try and pull one over on them. So when I gave PayPerPost a try, I told everyone up front. Heck, thanks to my terrible mangling of the CSS on my blog, the “invisible” tracking gifs are outlined in green, which makes it really easy to identify anything that’s a PayPerPost post. It’s absolutely transparent.
In addition to being honest about it, be honest about what you chose to post about. I picked a couple of things I would have posted about regardless, and that I had real opinions about. I didn’t post about Fast Loan Offers or Da Breakup Song. There is no requirement you be positive in your post, or put forth any particular viewpoint. You can be as honest as you’d like, and you should be.
That’s what blogging is all about, transparent and honest communication. Maintain both of those things, and us “Z-listers” can probably make a few bucks without breaking the internet in half.