Monday, October 1, 2007

Disclosure required


PayPerPost.com is a website that connects advertisers with bloggers. Here are the advantages that they cite for advertisers: "PayPerPost delivers online word of mouth marketing, brand building and traffic generation through the world's largest consumer generated advertising community and marketplace."
Here is was advantages bloggers get: "Get paid for blogging. Write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers. Disclosure required."


Disclosure required” is big here. Transparency is key. And I feel that most people will listen to your message if you are honest. Know I don’t know if the bloggers only get paid if they give the product a glowing endorsement, but disclosure of any relationship between blogger and advertiser is needed.

This brings me to the ethics of giving product to a blogger to write about. I don’t think that it is such a big deal with most things. As long as the blogger is up front about how they got the product. However, I find it hard to compare bloggers who review products and actual newspaper product reviewers. This is because a blogger has less constraints or checks from an editor. While fellow bloggers might call someone out for a misleading or unethical post, it is hard to say that every wrong doing or “bribed” endorsement will have light shed on it.



  • Should companies give products to bloggers?

  • Should bloggers get paid to write about a certain product/service/topic?

  • What about company employees that get paid to run company blogs?

  • Is PayPerPost.com a good thing?

1 comment:

Shane said...

I definetely think that companies should give bloggers products in return for endorsements, whether they are good or bad. I don't see the harm in it. I think that ultimately the consumer has the final decision whether they want to buy a product or not. This is a job for bloggers. I would happily take products and money from corporations in exchange of an endorsement written by me. I think that pay per post is a good/smart idea.