Nerve Endings Firing Away

Blogging has moved past the regular Adsense and Yahoo Publisher revenue which offered at best cents to the average blogger. Highly-ranked trafficked blogs earned more [a lot more] but then these are a handful and it is tough to break into that club unless you blog full-time. I would be lying if I said I don’t care about earning a little from my blog and luckily I make enough to at least pay for my hosting and a few cups of coffee through Yahoo Publisher and Text Link Ads. But for the average blogger who doesn’t attract the hordes or doesn’t get Dugg regularly, can you earn more than cents?

If you agree with the basic anti-Nehruvian premise that earning a profit is not a bad thing, then even a casual blogger might not mind earning a few bucks on the side especially if you aren’t contracted to anything that takes you away from your real-world job. But the ethical lines of confusing your readers with paid promotions can get a little blurry. PayPerPost is one of the first ones out there that tried tempting bloggers – “write about web sites, products, services, and companies and earn cash for providing your opinion and valuable feedback to advertisers.” They started out without requiring a disclosure policy and got panned by blogging purists who rightly claimed that the readers would be deceived. And they were right, readers who normally trusted the blogger would not like it not because they knew he was getting paid but because they didn’t know which posts were paid for and which weren’t. So a harmless and genuine book review would be viewed with skepticism even when the blogger really meant every word and was not paid a dime.

But what if the blogger put in place a disclosure policy? That is, the blogger clearly specifies not only that he or she is getting paid to write a particular post but even discloses the amount. Would you trust the content? ReviewMe was a similar service to PayPerPost launched sometime late last year. Except in this case, bloggers had a choice of accepting to review a particular product, service, or website and had no clause for only positive reviews in addition to a full-disclosure policy. The reaction was mixed. TechCruncher Michael Arrington said:

While we applaud the fact that ReviewMe requires disclosure and prohibits advertisers from requiring a positive post, we still think the very act of paying bloggers to write about a product is a very bad idea.

Whereas Paul Stamatiou not only reviewed the site but also posted a full-disclosure on the amount he was getting paid to do it. I am not sure what I feel about this but considering that ReviewMe does not force you to accept review requests, or require positive reviews, it makes a compelling argument. And you get $20-$200 depending on how popular your blog is subject to condition that your review is at least 200 words long. If you choose to sign up [I haven't yet], here is a good primer on how to get more review requests and writing good [positive and negative] reviews for ReviewMe.

Bloggers have always received freebies in hope that they review them. Even to the extent of getting free laptops [I have gotten mostly books which I've reviewed]. Intangible [or even tangible] benefits that bloggers get for opining are numerous [ad clicks on Adsense for a unpaid review-post on MS Office 2007] and generally not noticed by the reader.

So here is the question – do you think bloggers should not accept money at all for reviewing anything? Or is it acceptable if they disclose that it is a paid review and/or disclose the amount they are getting paid? Would you trust the blogger any less?

Full disclosure: I am not getting paid to write this post.