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I Probably Can Be Bought

April 26, 2007 - Filed under: Information

In case you haven’t heard pay-per-post is something fairly new in blogging where advertisers pay influential bloggers to mention their site, service, product, etc.

I’m not against this at all and I think that if you can make a buck at what you are doing more power to you.

Many critics say that these bloggers need to disclose this relationship. I suppose that if you want to be totally above board you should tell your readers that you have been paid to recommend something. Maybe I’m crazy, but I don’t feel that disclosure of this type is even necessary. I recommend many sites, articles, software and just fun stuff on this blog. If you didn’t like my recommendations you wouldn’t be reading this now. While I have made a couple of recommendations for customers who have paid me for my site design services I also thought that their sites were worth recommending.

Anyone who takes money or any other compensation to recommend something that they don’t really believe in risks much more than their creditability and I believe most any audience can tell when you are not sincere. They may let you get away with it once or twice, but not on a regular basis.

I have never been offered any compensation to specifically write about something and I will probably never be that influential, but I’m not sure what I would do if that happened and I didn’t like what I was to recommend. Generally, I would prefer to just ignore something that I don’t like because I don’t like to be negative, but I also believe that any publicity can be good publicity and I would rather just see bad stuff fade away. I hope that I could say no, but it may just depend on how much the offer was.

Here’s a post on the subject by Max Kalehoff that I have been saving for a while called “People As Advertising: Risky Business”

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3 Comments »

  1. […] I like to advise my customers to use blogs of their own or write comments on other related blogs to attract visitors to their own sites. I keep seeing a new trend with companies and site owners paying blogger to write about their product or service. I have written before that I Probably Can Be Bought. […]

    Pingback by Paying Other Bloggers To Promote You — December 11, 2007 @ 9:05 am

  2. […] Congrats CBS3 In Philly. Hey Pittsburgh media outlets, I can probably be bought! […]

    Pingback by Lillicotch.com » The Right Way To Use Social Media — June 25, 2008 @ 7:50 am

  3. […] While my statement may not actually be enough disclosure, the rule is gray enough that you could argue it is. I don’t expect that anyone will actually offer me anything for my public opinion and I would like to  think that I wouldn’t give a positive review to something that I really don’t like, but I did write a post on this topic a couple of years ago called I Probably Can Be Bought. […]

    Pingback by Lillicotch.com » FTC Guidelines And My New Disclaimer — October 7, 2009 @ 2:11 pm

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