New Article - What Happens When Blog Posts Become A Commodity

[thejenn]

Authored by: Jennifer Laycock

Full Text: http://www.searchengineguide.com/laycock/009171.html

A Snippet:

Advertisers are realizing that there's good money to be made from the blog reading public. The problem is, they've also realized that that same public is learning to tune out the ads that run along side good content. The solution? Pay the bloggers to write the ads into the text of their blog posts.

[Novice user]

We get paid to write blogs and have been doing so for close to 2 years. Each blog entry is about 400-800 words. For some customers, we do this M-F. For others, once a week. Still others, twice a month. Each blog is part of a customer's site and helps get them indexed. The blogs have comments and are VERY active (for a niche interest). Each blog entry takes 20-60 minutes to write. Many of them have images or drawings to enhance understanding.

We know of no one else in our niche who writes blogs for money. Site owners never dictate what we write about, and we are free to write on whatever related subject or product we choose. Sometimes, we write about products that the customer sells, other times we write about products related to the customer's site (but are no longer made). All writing is truthful and straightforward. Product writeups include the good, the bad and the ugly. We have NEVER been told to remove something because it made a product look bad.

We've taken our experience writing for direct mail and transferred the writing style to blogs. All writing is done under various pseudonyms so we can write many blogs for the same niche interest without the appearance of being one person.

It's interesting that there are so few paid bloggers, as it's the perfect avenue for increasing placement in the SERPs through the use of fresh content. I also find it amusing that something we've been doing for 2 years is now being viewed as new. It's not new to us...it's been our path to a wonderful life of sitting at home and writing about the things we enjoy!

[thejenn]

Yes, but there's a difference between being a paid writer for client sites and being paid to write something SPECIFIC on your own site.

Unless I'm mistaken, you are doing the former while I'm writing about the latter.

Just not sure how that's going to fly with the general blog-reading public.

[Nicolette]

I'm happy that you're getting paid for doing what you love. As a blogger, I see an inherent danger in paying someone to post. The essence of blogging is to engage a like-minded readership who share your passion for the topic.

What happens when you've been writing for a oil and gas company for 2 years and gas prices spike. Your loyal readers now turn on you with negative comments. Now you have a reputation management issue. Is the CEO now going to step in and take over posting? Perhaps you are writing in more benign industries.

Ultimately, I think a company loses control when it hands over the reins of a critical and personal communication like blogging.

Just my two cents.

Blogging at Man-o-pause.com (by the way.)

[codeplacidly]

I make my day to day living as a developer, and blog as a hobby. (If it weren't for blogging, I wouldn't be here )

I've looked into things like payperpost but not yet taken the leap, mainly because it just doesn't feel right. My blog has a core of readers, mainly ppl I know, and I can't imagine any of them being overimpressed if I started littering the place with adverts of that kind. And I can't think of many ppl whose blogs I'd continue to read if they started on with that kind of thing either.

Difficult to see how this one is going to pan out tbh.

Jax

[thejenn]

Yep, I've battled with that same thing on my "fun" blog. Its got a very nice readership for a niche and I could probably make some nice extra money from payperpost. Even signed up just to see how the system worked.

But when it comes down to it, I just can't think that my readers would respect me if I did it. Now I do get lots of free products and review those, but I always disclose whether I bought the product or recieved it for free and my reviews have always been honest. I usually don't "need" what they send so it gets passed on to another mom anyway.

Somehow that just feels different from "Hey, I'm going to tell you guys about this site that you should go see, oh by the way, they are paying me to tell you this."

That said, I suppose some creative bloggers could work them in as blog commercials the same way that radio hosts often do the on-air reading of commercials...(thinking Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh and Paul Harvey, etc...)

[BWelford]

I don't do this but I see no problems if you make the disclaimer as you suggest, thejenn. If you only write about items that you think are worth writing about, then your reputation should ensure that folk will take the time to check out whether you are giving them something they appreciate.

[Shoestring]

I don't think it's relevant to compare product placement in movies with paying a blogger to say something positive about something he/she has not even tried. The whole idea of blogging is for individuals to speak their minds with no strings attached. There is a certain element of trust between bloggers and readers. When the blogger accepts money to become the mouthpiece of special interests that bond of trust is broken. Who will want to read a blog after it has turned into just one more advertising vehicle?

[solid28]

Originally Posted by thejenn

But when it comes down to it, I just can't think that my readers would respect me if I did it.

Yeah I could see totally see that backfiring. Also I think that over the course of many blog posts, people would begin to notice.


As for the people saying that blogging is all about speaking your mind, I agree that in many cases thats true. But I have two thoughts about this.

1)Some people get paid to speak their mind (even about a product).
2)Your blog can be whatever you want it to be...it can even be a blog where you get paid to write about a specific product.

[Old Welsh Guy]

Not sure about the US, but in the Uk in publishing, if you are paid to write editorial content you MUST label it at the head of the page as 'paid advertorial content' The law in the Uk is VERY strict on advertising and consumer rights.

I think there will be a test case about this as it contravens the rights of the individual to be instantly able to distinguish WITHOUT CONSIDERATION (the legal definition) advertising space from editorial space. I know this as we got nailed a few years (in our printed material days) back when we accompanied an advert by editorial and our stupid studio forgot to label the page 'advertising feature'