The ethics of sponsored posting
12:39PM, November 21, 2007 - [ Permalink]
Yesterday, I received an email from someone asking if I would be willing to write an unofficial sponsored post.
Here is the lightly edited version of the email:
I was wondering if you would consider a paid blog post on your blog at www.leroux.ca. I have a life insurance website (Canadian) that I like to promote via blogs.
Here's what I'm looking for:
- an honest review of my website, couple of hundred words is fine.
- one or two links to my site from within the blog post, without a 'nofollow' tag.
- not directly indicate in the post that it's a 'sponsored'.
I'd be happy to offer you $30 for that - probably 5 minutes work. If you're interested please let me know.
I appreciate your time on this, thanks.
Now, obviously, I am not accepting the request, mainly because of the condition of not indicating it is a sponsored post which feels so very unethical to me. I will, reply via email with a counter proposal. Let's see what happens.
I would be willing to do the post if I could indicate it was a sponsored post. I don't even have issue with the not using a nofollow tag as I already don't use them on most outgoing links.
Certainly, I know that some bloggers do accept money for posts like this, but $30 for a two hundred word review of a website? Maybe if you are a fast typist, and don't do anything beyond looking at the first page. A real review would probably take a couple of hours.
Why does it feel unethical? If you don't say it is an advertisement -which this is - it feels to me like I am being deceptive. Certainly, monetization of my blog is important to me, as I am self-employed and every stream of revenue I can generate is important.
However, the potential damage done to my reputation may very well rock the Internet to its foundations and result in my millions of fictional readers wailing in the streets, causing worldwide traffic chaos. We all know that if readers are suffering from emotional collapse, they are not likely to be online, much less clicking on ads, or buying my products, now can they?
If you look around online to see what others think of this, you will likely come across Melissa Petri's post on ProBlogger.net and cyberjournalist post as well as many, many others, most of which call for transparency and honesty.
That being said, for a fee, I would be happy to write a critical review of your website, make suggestions on possible improvements and point to the parts that shine.
