J.Ryan writes an interesting post at guerrilla news network on a strategy USWeb.com is using to promote clients using blogs. In short they are paying bloggers $5 to write nice things about their clients – even suggesting what such posts might include in them. Here’s a taster of a longer post:
‘While searching the online postings at CraigsList, I came across an interesting post, which read, “Get paid for blogging… We will pay you to post to your blog. We pay $5 via PayPal per blog posting. To start earning cash, email me with your name and blog URL. We are looking for people to pay today. If you don’t have a PayPal account, we can also send you a gift certificate for iTunes if you like.”
So I sent off an email requesting further information. The reply email came from Ed Shull (ed@uswest.com) and read, “This is pretty simple. I will provide a subject, you write a short (50 word min.) post, we pay you $5. The first subject is a flower site. You should give a favorable review of the flower site, Dot Flowers.” The rest of the email went on to explain that in the review I must link to the Dot Flowers website using the anchor text “buy flowers online.” It also included a list of things I could write; such as “they have better pricing,” and that their site loads faster than the competitors sites. There was also info about the technical aspects of the site, such as the code used behind the pages and that it’s “error free.” After completing the post, the instructions were simple, “…please send me a URL to the post and your PayPal address. Also, let me know how often you wish to post for us, and we will send over more subjects. Thanks, Ed….”’
Read the rest of this article at Blogging for Dollars
In some ways there is nothing new in this – its been going on for years in all forms of media (there was a scandal here on Australian radio a year or so back on ‘cash for comment’ – what is interesting with this is that this is happening in a pretty public and organized way in blogging – a medium that this type of behavior has the potential to become rife in.
I’m interested in what others think – have your say in comments below.
