Paid Blogs

Blogging for money? Is it right? Some may say yes arguing that they are making a living and as long as advertisers want to pay them, they are doing what anyone else would do.

However, there is a growing number of people crying out over this pay-to-blog sort of mentality saying that the act is unethical.

Essentially, there are some companies out there, such as PayPerPost Inc. which links advertisers to ordinary bloggers who can get money if they blog/advertise about a company's product, book, etc. This pay to post sort of logic however, in many ways defeats the purpose of a blog which is basically to offer a person's rant or opinion on just about anything.

For a long time now, people have viewed the blog as a sort of untouched territory in which people are not forced to write about something they don't want to. In fact, there are many people who surf the net to read people's blogs that review stores, products or services to find an untainted opinion of something.

However, if people are being paid to give an opinion, is that opinion still considered untainted? If someone, is being paid to review something and can write whatever they want, then it wouldn't seem to break any code of ethics - especially if they also post on the same review that they are being paid by the product's company.

If bloggers are being paid to write positive reviews, then it is unethical - especially if they are not telling readers about the money aspect of the blog. This is unethical because people think that the opinions are generated out of a blogger's pure experience with the product - not because an advertiser says, "hey, here's $10 to say nice things about my store's service."

Generally speaking, reputable newspapers and other publications do not accept freebies or payments to review products because they want to gain the respect of readers. If bloggers continue to accept payments from advertisers and then offer no transparency about this to readers, then they do a disservice to blogging in general.

Readers will become wary of what is being posted and then people in general will have the attitude that they shouldn't trust anything in a blog out of fear that it may be a paid advertisement.

So, if you are being paid, then you should be truthful to readers about it. Readers have a right to know if you are being paid so that they can make a decision on their own about whether your posting is worthwhile reading or just another commercial they should have skipped over.