The blogosphere is filled with big mouths. Big open male mouths. Big loud obnoxious talking heads who use their blog as wallpaper for their own big loud talking money making heads and mouths.
I know, I border on that description myself. I pull no punches about it.
And that's okay.
So is it okay for this lady to make a few dollars to support her Masters work in the humanities by every now and again taking advantage of a pay-per-post opportunity that is in keeping with her what her blog is about.
So is it okay for me to tell George he can make $4 on paypal by checking out a voice-mixing software and giving a positive or negative review, in 40 words or more, including a link to the product? So is it okay for me NOT to write about any products who only want positive feedback? So is it okay for someone else to drop in an AD that they actually WRITE for $10 for a PPP advertiser looking for blog-based advertising if they choose to?
Did Jason Calcanis -- who the entire blogosphere unabashedly fawned over at the Blog Business Summit yesterday, nice guy or not--actually say these words out loud?
"If you’re a blogger and want to keep the blogosphere pure I suggest calling these people–and the advertisers who are using them–out."
Did Jason just call the blogosphere:
PURE?
Oh give me a motherfucking virginal break.
Blogging never promised purity.
The Internet isn't pure. That's why we're here.
That's certainly what helped you out, Jason. The Purity of the Internet. Oh. My. God.
How much ad revenue are the folks dissing PayPerPost making? EVERY SINGLE CRITIC of payperpost I've seen so far makes money through blogging. I do too. Some of us command significant ad dollars because of YOU. Because of your traffic, your downloads, your click-throughs.
But when the proverbial longtail z-lister decides that making $20 every few days for a few posts on stuff that looks interesting and might help with gas money, we're supposed to: "call these people" out?
Why? So those same advertisers can dump money into the megamonopoly blogs of the guys complaining? What's wrong with an intermediary matching up advertisers (and there are regular bloggers there too paying folks for their attention) with people willing to write for them? What's wrong with double boxing one post out of 10 or 5 or 105 and making it an ad? The same critics of payperpost do exactly this with text ads at the end (or beginning) of their posts.
I ask those with the vendetta: Do you think blog readers are so crippled by..... what exactly... lack of intelligence??... that we are going to be duped by a guy from Kansas doing a post on his blog about life insurance? And if he does it well, who cares? If he talks about his dad who died and left him without insurance as a kid and he had to go dig ditches, where he lost an arm in a tragic tractor incident, which meant he could never hold his newborn baby, then I don't care if he links to GIECO for crying out loud. Because he's writing interesting stuff. And if I make a poem out of a software review and it makes you cry, what's wrong with that? And if I do it badly, then why do you care because you won't read me anyway?
One thing PPP does is verify that you are actually a blogger--you have to have a blog that's been around for a month or more, you have to have a real email address, you have to show that you're not a bot. IF IF IF IF they really work that process without cutting corners, then I think this is a legitimate way to make matches between bloggers and advertisers. THAT is the sweet-spot that every single financially minded business person in the blogosphere has been looking at since the first post oh so many years ago.
I signed up for PayPerPost after the panel I participated in today on business blogging, where payperpost came up as a sort of "icky" thing. I had been hearing a lot about it, and had NO idea if it was legit or not. After an initial look, I'm not so sure it is icky.
When rich guys and guys who can forget to pay their electric bill and then send a thousand dollars to the utility company without blinking an eye start saying Tanya McLaughlin is doing something wrong, well then it's time for me to give it a loooooksie. Don'tcha think?
I'll keep you POSTED.
Tags: mike arrington, jason calcanis, payperpost, advertising, blogging, web2.0, intermediaries, B2B, social media, writing, spam blogs, technology, advertising, business, public relations, tanya mclaughlinPowered by Qumana
