Have you heard about PayPerPost.com yet? It is a service that allows bloggers to get paid for posting about specific products and services. I have been wondering when an efficient tool for facilitating product placement was going to come to the blogosphere. Here is how they describe the service:
PayPerPost is a mesh of influential blogs and bloggers who are open to and accept association with corporate sponsors and advertisers. PayPerPost recognizes and utilizes the power of Consumer Generated Media to allow corporations to communicate their message through Blogs by way of advertising, testimonials and product reviews.
I heard about this from James Robertson who was lamenting the lack of requirements for disclosure. I don’t think there is any rule against disclosure, it is just up to the discretion of the blogger. That seems correct to me. I am testing out the PayPerPost service and hopefully will be getting paid for this post, but that is my business (pun intended). I don’t feel required to share that information with a disclosure statement.
One of my rights as a blogger is to publish and promote what ever I want for any reason I see fit. If people find what I write useful then they will continue to read my blog (both of them). I have an agenda for many of the posts I make here and it is not always evident to anyone but me. That is no different than the real world which is part of the reason I shun the who “citizen journalism” for myself. What I think is more important than disclosure is the freedom to write the way that I want. I often weave seemingly unrelated topics together into the same post. If I can write the way that I want and make a few bucks for some product placement then PayPerPost seems like a pretty good deal to me and a relevant topic for this blog.
