Perhaps I’m opening up a can of worms here, but if there’s one place to really find out what bloggers think about something then it would be here at Fuelmyblog.
You’ve all heard of paid blog posts before and the services which allow you, as bloggers, to make a bit of extra cash by banging out a blog post or seven.
Services exist such as Pay Per Post, Sponsored Reviews, Social Spark, and some of these services thread the very thin line of breaking the rules laid down by the search engines in order to prevent pollution of the search results.
With many of these services it is possible to fall afoul of penalties from Google (and others) for including paid links and these penalties can result in your PageRank being decreased as well as your standing in the search results.
In some more extreme cases it can result in your site being removed from the search index all together.
So here’s my questions to the Fuelmyblog community.
What do you think of paid posts?
Do they have their place or are they simply a way to buy incoming links?
Should paid posts be disclosed?
Would you trust a blogger if they didn’t disclose their paid posts?
Do search engines have a write to dictate what we do with out own web spaces?
nice.
blogging is such a hobby and an additional income indeed
keep it up!
I have been doing paid posts over a year now. I do the bulk of my paid posting with PayPerPost and SocialSpark. There was a time when I strayed over to PayU2Blog but then stopped working with them for personal reasons (one was disclosure.)
I do think that they have their place, they should not be the focus of someone’s blog or the reason why they blog. I see little value in a blog that is merely made of paid posts.
I think that paid posts should be disclosed. Have I done paid posts that were not disclosed? Yes, not thrilled about it but have done it.
I think it would depend upon the blogger as to whether or not I trusted them and their non-disclosed paid posts. It would also depend on the post I read. There are many reputable bloggers who write paid posts. And many times you can easily tell when a post has been sponsored. So I think you can take those posts with a grain of salt sometimes.
I don’t think that search engines should dictate what we do with our blogs. They are certainly within their rights to determine where a blog falls in their ranking system.
I think that everybody can blog about what they want to blog about and that paid blogging in itself is not a “evil” thing, which somehow taints the ideal of blogging.
I do think though that – just as with (other) advertisement – it should be clear that it is a paid post. There’s no shame in that, we all need money to survive [and if it was or wasn't a better world if that wasn't the case, is a question for another kind of discussion].
What keeps people from stating it, I think, is at least partly some snobbery from other bloggers, who think that they’re “too good” to write paid posts and look down on people who do.
As for the trust issue… paid post or not, you should never blindly trust anyone’s post. Keep on thinking on your own and you’re going to be alright.
The search engines dictating what we read: yes, they can and do do that. But I don’t think that they can dictate what we write, if we see the writing as an end in itself. If we write not what we want, but what we want people to read, then search engines can do that.
But their algorhithms aren’t perfect and I hope they never will be. That keeps them from really controlling everything.
And as long as people communicate, there’s word of mouth, which will always beat the technology.
I have toyed with the idea of ads but paid blogging? I suppose if the topic were one you’d write about anyway and you were free to give your own opinion there is nothing wrong with it.
The search engines have the right to treat this type of post differently because it is like advertising in a way and people using the engines have a right to know if the information they are pulling up is being planted by companies or groups.
I’ve used paid posts in the past with some of my other blogs and on some their pagerank has either increased or stayed the same, but on one the pagerank was blasted to zero and the blog in question only had one paid post, so it’s really swings and roundabouts, do you take the risk for a bit of extra cash or do you not bother at all, I would say go for it, every little bit of extra cash helps
I have thought about doing paid posts but I do not get enough traffic to make any money. I have ads on my blogger blog. LOL I have earned a grand total of $6. LOL I will not read a blog that is mostly paid posts. And yes I think it should be disclosed that it is a paid post. I do not believe that a search engine should determine what we write. That is censorship.
I’ve found a really efficient cure to a site if adverts are an issue.
(ctrl)+(f4).
If someone vents about a site having too much advertisement, isn’t that really admitting they hang out online in places they don’t like?
Kind of funny when you look at it that way.
(Disclaimer: KevinD doesn’t reimburse me for kissing butt. If you’d like me to kiss yours, contact me for applicable rates.)
Eat At Lifeonwards.com.
The preceding message was a blatant attempt to influence you. The view is strictly JohnC’s and Fuelmyblog.com cannot be held responsible for his incontinence.
Ok, seriously. It’s a learning curve of many decent and prominent bloggers in the making. Either I read blogs regularly because I connect with the writer as a person, or I connect to what the theme is.
The different forms of advertising improve over time in being less invasive, usually. In a way, critiquing someone’s advertising is the equivalent of commenting about a person’s attire in the real world.
I’m not that way in the real world. I try not to be online.
I don’t see anything wrong with paid posts, as long as it’s a product or service that I approve of and it’s clear to the reader that’s what it is. I don’t take any opps that are sleezy or that I couldn’t recommend to a friend. I’ve done them and plan to continue, and I don’t try to trick anyone. To me it’s just another form of advertising and revenue to the blog, no different than running Adsense etc.
I do paid posts in my blogs and I am alright with it. I just published a post about this matter. It is nice to make money, and we are not doing anything illegal.