Are you getting Paid Per Post?

I was reading a few blogs, as you do when your on the internet, and one topic kept popping up. Payperpost is a relatively new service for bloggers that lets them get paid to write about certain products and services. Now that sounds interesting to me! A student always in need of money, getting paid to do something that I’m already doing. Hmmm… However! Many people are divided by this idea of getting paid to blog as they think that the opinions expressed will be biased.

I can see where they come from, many people would jump at the chance to get paid to write a few paragraphs whether they believed in what they wrote or not. Imagine getting paid about $10 to say that some new mobile phone is worth buying or a new website is worth visiting. Not bad, but I couldn’t blatantly lie about something and say that’s it great just because I was getting paid for it. I have morals! And standards! And ethics! But not everyone does and that is what some people fear; blog posts becoming biased towards companies because they are being paid.

I think that bloggers should be upfront and say “Yes, I’m being paid for this post”, and state whether the opinions are their own or bought. They can do this on a per post basis or by using a disclosure policy covering their whole blog. By doing this, readers can choose to read the post or not and the trust between blogger and reader can remain intact.

Being a curious person I decided to take a look at the Payperpost site. The site has a few rules for blogs that wish to apply eg. must be over 90 days old, more than 20 posts, & no gaps larger than 30 days. However the front tells you little of what sort of things you have to write about. So I did the obvious thing and signed up to have a look inside. You don’t need to add a blog straight away which was fine by me because my blog doesn’t meet most of the criteria and I’m not sure if I want to head down that route just yet. The ‘opportunities’, as they are called on the site, range widely from writing about dating sites to Sony Ericsson’s latest phone.

Payperpost also has two affiliate programs that could cause less division among the blogging community. The first is a referral program in which the referrer gets $15 once the referee’s blog gets accepted. That’s not bad for putting a small button on your site! The second more useful program is called ‘Review my post’. Any member can put a badge on the bottom of their posts and get paid $7.50 when a Payperpost member clicks on it and writes a review of your post on their blog. They also get paid $7.50 for their troubles, by the way. The button seems to apply to any post made on that blog not just the one you clicked from.

What I find interesting about this is that the blogging community thrives on links from one blog to another, something which I had planned to start including in my posts, and getting paid to link to and review blogs will only increase this trend. What this will mean to the blogging community, I’m not sure, maybe nothing but I know I have seen a lot of those little ‘review my post’ bars on blogs that past few days. On the ethics of accepting payment for posts, I think it’s ok once the blogger states that they are being paid for it.