17 Jan 2008

Not all my posts are sponsored

One of the drawbacks of carrying some sponsored posts and doing paid reviews is that the credibility of every post of mine is under question. For example, some of my regular visitors automatically assumed that my new Dell computer was sponsored by Dell. I bought it with hard earned cash made by writing sponsored posts via PayPerPost. I may be wrong but I doubt that Dell sponsors any blogger to write reviews about their products. Come to think of it, that is not a bad idea. They should send me some of their products to be reviewed.

Anyway as a lot of people have come to realise, starting a blog for the sole purpose of writing sponsored posts does not work out - Google frowns on it and you don't want to piss of the guys there. The end result might be a big fat PR Zero.

Such practices are also frowned upon by companies that are involved in consumer generated advertising, like Izea. However, the most important people that you don't want to alieniate are your own visitors because after a while, even those who are not net savvy will realise the fact that you are carrying too many posts linking to sites, some of which have nothing to do with the actual post. In mean they are not reviews or even an advertorial. I am sure blog regulars will know what I am talking about. These are only for SEO purposes. So don't be surprised if you find your visitor statistics slipping slowly.

Trust me - I am talking from personal experience.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thanks for the great post. That’s a great way of appreciating your readers. I liked that.

Anonymous said...

Luckily i dont do alot on my site, 15-20% only but i still get the big '0'

Anonymous said...

You're spot on about blogs that have nothing but paid posts. They simply have no credibility whatsoever. I don't mind reading paid reviews and I actually find some of them to be very good, but only those that are written as "normal" post i.e. when author actually took time to do research and made effort to make good post that is informative and objective.

Anonymous said...

I know of a few bloggers who have resorted to most of the content being paid posts, it's a shame to see them dwindle into obscurity.