A List Bloggers Shouldn't Throw Stones

There are a number of fatal, hypocritical or naive flaws in almost every attack on paid posts by A list bloggers and it is time to show them their Achilles heel(s).

I am going to highlight Selling Links

• Friends - you link to your friend, your friend might link to you


• Your employer - if your company does well, you benefit


• Promote a social media platform to your readers, and you suddenly get lots of friends on that platform, and possibly more prominence or authority.

  Gone are the innocent days of the internet when people linked through to others purely based on it being good content, and that is especially true of the blogosphere. You link through to people and trackback/pingback because you want to express your views, and for other people to read them, and maybe respond in turn.

  Gaming Search Engines?

  The Yahoo directory has for years been a pillar of support for the Google algorithms. For over 5 years it has been paid inclusion only for commercial sites.

  If I ran a blog on Wordpress.com and tagged it "blogging" I would gain link equity from Robert Scoble, via the 21 unique blogs according to Technorati, though some of it is syndication, feed errors or splogs.

  People attack paid post companies because they have no intent to receive a pay check from them. In the same post Matt highlighted, a mother of 2 in the comments has technical problems using the disclosure being required, but this is not the case for other affiliate program whose members practice word of mouth marketing. In fact they are not specific, they just require what is required by the FTC.
  
  PayPerPost currently require more than is probably required by the FTC, and certainly much more than is practiced by 95% of affiliates.

  Why are Pay Per Post getting a hard time over disclosure?

  Examples of Ethical Paid Reviews
  • I wrote a review for Volusion Shopping Cart Review - In my opinion I went into as much depth as was possible for a service with so many features, and didn't pull any punches about features I felt needed improvement.
  
  
  • 
    I actually turned down a $150 review yesterday for ethical reasons - I had received manual comment spam from people promoting the product.

    There are also affiliates that write glowing reviews of products that they have only read the sales page for, but no one would dream of attacking Clickbank, Linkshare or Commission Junction over this. Google in many ways prevent disclosure for their referral units.
    Have you seen fake book reviews with links to Amazon? That is obviously Amazon's fault, and last time I looked Amazon didn't require disclosure.Would Wordpress Exist Without Paid Links?

    How many Wordpress contributors make money for their contribution from paid links either in the sidebar of their blog, or within the content? 80%? 90%?
    
    I am sure every single one of them makes more money from paid links than donations.

    Suggested Reading

    Seriously? Every single post on this blog tagged nofollow

    Personal Challenge

    Give me any^[1] A List blog, and I will find problems with their disclosure or legal terms, on a paid post consultancy basis through either ReviewMe.
    
    I should note that I am not a lawyer, so this is for entertainment purposes, and anything I point out could well be subject to interpretation and there is no guarantee. Also note that the review would be published on this blog without prior approval, and that rates will be increasing to $200 soon.

    That is nothing compared to the hourly rate of many Wordpress consultants. I can't advise on code solutions for platforms other than Wordpress. Review length will really depend on what I have to work with.

    If I can't find anything wrong, you will get a free review that I will publish anyway.

    [1] I won't link to content that is in my opinion inappropriate for this blog

    Oh, and to make this really interesting, you don't have to be the blog owner to order a review.

    In closing, no one is perfect, and that includes myself - I have only just added a privacy statement and it is not formally worded.

    *Originally published at AndyBeard.eu