Paid Blogging: What it is and what not

The cries and hues about paid blogging and pay per post blogging is not without a reason. At one side is advertisers trying to capitalize on the credibility of bloggers as genuine commentators and on the other side is a set of bloggers who want to uphold the integrity and credibility of blogging community.

What paid blogging is acceptable?

I can pay someone to write for my blog. I can also accept payment for writing on someone else's blog. It is the same as ghost writing or column writing for a magazine, which has been around for quite a long time. Freelance writers make their living out of this type of writing.

The blog owner may choose to acknowledge the contributor or not. The present nature of blogging environment is such that such contributions are easily acknowledged. Anyone can pay professional writers to get enough blog posts to make his or her blog content rich. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this model of paid blogging.

What model of paid blogging is not acceptable?

When someone pay me to post something in my blog, it is not acceptable. I can't also pay someone to write what I say in his or her blog. Doing so is in no way similar to ghost writing. It is simple bribery. At first the blogger may be free to write his or her own views about a specific website, product or service. Soon there will be more strings as to avoid excessive negative comments about a product, then it will be avoid negative and final stage will be the blogger asked for blatant promotion of the product.

Such a type of paid blogging is comparable to bribing the editors of a newspaper to write favorable columns for a party, any party. Newspapers have ear marked areas for such expression. It is called advertising space.

With the present type of pay per post blogging or paid blogging, a blogger has to develop a reasonably populated blog and sell the post space as promotion space. Advertisers see several benefits in bribing bloggers. The main one is immediate access to a good reader base. Secondary advantage comes in the form of extra search engine juice. The damage is only for the blogger and for the whole blogosphere.

This can bring in considerable damage to the blogging community as a whole. The reputation of bloggers as reliable information providers will be affected. People generally start disbelieving bloggers as a whole.

The requirement to acknowledge acceptance of payment in the post is not a reliable option to separate paid posts and own posts. The marking can become so blurred that the creativity and genuine opinion too will be viewed as writing on someone's interest.