BlogHer - Paid Posts, Sponsors, Ads, or All of the Above? - Comments

If that which is freely offered comes hard...

Lisa Stone — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 14:18:26 -0600

...how about some genuine Koan? I know you've got at least one book in you, not to mention a t-shirt, a mug or other Goodstorm.com items with Koan quotables? I'm quite serious.

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Monetisation

Koan — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 02:06:14 -0600

My own attitudes to money and monetisation have vexed me greatly over the last couple of years. I began with a very purist attitude - no ads, no sponsorship, would never charge for content, and that was that.

Sadly, I can't eat ideals - and while the financial costs of running my blog aren't immense, they *are* real. More as an experiment than anything else, I added Google Ads a while back, to see what kind of ads they'd serve to a blog like mine, to see if anybody would actually notice, and to see if anybody would click through. I joined BlogHerAds, because I feel more inclined to see BlogHer and BlogHers succeed than the Googles.

The thing that vexes me most is something that Jeneane mentions - donations. I have readers giving me quite a hard time about *not* having a donation button - it's no secret there that I haven't been working this year, for hopefully valid reasons, and you don't have to read *too* closely between the lines to know that life's been rather a challenge, as a result. I could do as those readers suggest, and add a donation option - and then I know that I would feel obligated. Even though, as a Buddhist, I know that I should "take only that which is freely given" - *accepting* that which is freely offered comes hard, to me.

The PPP model is not right for me - I don't object to others doing it, I prefer to know when they *are* doing it, but I'm intelligent and discerning enough to judge the provenance and motivation of *everything* I read, whether I know it's paid for or not.

Blog: Multidimensional.Me

Fascinating...

Crunchy Carpets — Tue, 31 Oct 2006 00:18:40 -0600

I have been around the 'net since the first bulletn boards sprung up....

The 'ethics' question never goes away...and has now found its way into the blogosphere.

The print vs online or the real journalist vs the blogger for fun and so on.

It is tough.

Many people online WANT to be respected and given the same respect and street cred as a print journalist.

And personal opinion or not...I think anyone posting should have the same integrity or ethics (hahahaha) as a professional journalist.

Online news and entertainment sites have had this struggle for years now.

Many in cyberspace want it to remain 'pure' and 'uncorrupted ' by the almighty dollar.....nice idea but not when you have bills to pay.

I don't know what I think about this PPP thing....

I do think there has to be a clear line between a personal blog ...and editorial blog so to speak...and one that you are basically a hired writer for a company or product.

I don't like how marketing and advertising is sneaking into the blog world like this...

I am fine with ads and even sponsorship......as long as the sponsorship or ads don't dictate the content of the blog or website.

This will keep going on and evolve and change as the internet changes too.

The controversy will never go away.

Disclosure just got easier

Lisa Stone — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 23:10:01 -0600

Why disclose? Two reasons

Numero Uno: Trust. Maria, you nailed it with this sentence: "I think that in the long run, if you aren't upfront with your readers you risk losing them." Case in point: If WalMart had disclosed upfront that they were paying Jim and Laura for their gas, time and writing on the "WalMart Across America" blog, no one would have felt tricked by the writers. But WalMart didn't and the users did. (Note to anyone who missed it: Here's the backstory, which followed Liz Thompson, Pam, Marianne Richmond and Morra Aarons.)

Numero Dos: Money. If people trust you (numero uno) and read you, you have a product. A product on which you may choose to sell valuable advertising. But you cannot sell advertising on something that is already an ad. So you may use a PPP publishing model, by all means, as long as you disclose it. Then you don't shoot your long-term earning potential in the foot. So for anyone who's doing PPP, I recommend designating every PPP post you do with a special PPP category and posting a disclosure policy

. That way you are doing everything possible to take care of numero uno - that trust part - and no one may besmirch you.

How do you come up with a disclosure policy? Easy: As of today, the PPP team just launched a new site at http://disclosurepolicy.org that auto-generates excellent disclosure policies based on your unique answers. Here's an excerpt from the announcement:

â€œThere have been numerous cycles of transparency debate â€“ whether involving religious, political or financial bias â€“ since individuals had the freedom to publish their thoughts and creations online,â€ said Ted Murphy, CEO of PayPerPost. â€œAlthough blogs are great for distributing opinions, news and debate, the blogosphere is currently the wild west of media. There are few standards regarding disclosure and transparency of message, creating a landscape that is difficult to navigate for bloggers and readers alike. For example, should Amazon dictate to their affiliates how to disclose payment for purchases resulting from an affiliate bloggerâ€™s endorsement. DisclosurePolicy.org was created to provide a uniform disclosure mechanism as well as a central place to discuss the ongoing issues surrounding disclosure and transparency."

I just put myself through the DisclosurePolicy.org process and it's excellent. I was able to choose between well-worded policy options designed to encapsulate free stuff as well as payments and advertising. Below I copy the policy I just auto-generated for my personal blog, Surfette (http://surfette.typepad.com). My only complaint is that I have no co-authors there and, um, I don't typically refer to myself in the royal "we"...but, hey, I can edit the thing:

This policy is valid from 30 October 2006

This blog is a personal blog written and edited by me. This blog does not accept any form of advertising, sponsorship, or paid insertions. We write for our own purposes. However, we may be influenced by our background, occupation, religion, political affiliation or experience.

The owner(s) of this blog will never receive compensation in any way from this blog.

The owner(s) of this blog is not compensated to provide opinion on products, services, websites and various other topics. The views and opinions expressed on this blog are purely the blog owners. If we claim or appear to be experts on a certain topic or product or service area, we will only endorse products or services that we believe, based on our expertise, are worthy of such endorsement. Any product claim, statistic, quote or other representation about a product or service should be verified with the manufacturer or provider.

This blog does contain content which might present a conflict of interest. This content will always be identified. We are employed by or consult with: BlogHer LLC. We serve on the following corporate or non profit boards: Center for Citizen Media, USC Annenberg Journalism . We blog about people to whom we are related. The most interesting such people are: Christopher Carfi, Nancy Stone, Anna Stone.

The only thing I can add to DisclosurePolicy.org's template is this: While I accept travel reimbursement if I give a talk or teach a class, I don't accept honoraria or gifts worth more than $25.

To test it yourself, start here: http://www.disclosurepolicy.org/generator/generate_policy. Would love to know what you think.

Lisa Stone
BlogHer Co-founder
Surfette

Excellent analysis, Jeneane

Maria Niles — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 17:50:44 -0600

Thanks for sharing your take on the Pay Per Post brouhaha. Your analysis is, as always, excellent and insightful.

The notion that all bloggers are journalists and required to maintain a church/state editorial divide the way traditional print journalists do is nuts in my opinion. And, if a post is clearly marked as advertising then how does it differ from advertorials and advertising supplements provided by traditional print media other than having two separate pools of "pure" and "tainted" writers?

I see many of the personal finance bloggers I read doing PPP. Many of these bloggers are women who are work-at-home moms who are just trying to find ways to cover their bandwith bills or sometimes trying to pay off unexpected expenses like this blogger.

My only concern is the lack of required transparency. I see the same PPP topics on multiple blogs and so I recognize them even if the blogger does not disclose. I think that in the long run, if you aren't upfront with your readers you risk losing them. But the notion that readers don't want to read real life, messy, completely biased, based-only-on-the-blogger's-life-experience blogs and would begrudge them PPP revenue for the sake of expected purity is silly. A world of "A-list", mostly male, pure-by-their-standards, bloggers who think they are journalists is one that I would find supremely boring.

I PayPerPost and I am always

Shan — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 16:51:59 -0600

I PayPerPost and I am always sincere and honest. That's the whole issue, honesty. It falls on the bloggers to be honest. Everyone else thinks that having an argument gives them justification to slam PayPerPost and anyone who uses it. It's ridiculous.

Paid Posts, Sponsors, Ads, or All of the Above?

Jeneane Sessum — Mon, 30 Oct 2006 14:30:16 -0600

I blogged a couple of days ago about my dismay over big bloggers' seemingly out-of-proportion disgust with PayPerPost. While many in-the-know bloggers were scoffing at PPP, some folks thought maybe I had a point, or at least a right to point fingers at the irony of chiding by rich guys who make money off of readers and advertisers colliding in not-so-dissimilar ways.

The fight between the PPP model and the journalist-paid-by-sponsor model won't end anytime soon. My opinion--that's a good thing. Think of it as a balance of power. Yeah, like that.

Teresa Valdez Klein said Jason Calcanis told her at dinner, "that if a blogger has to have a conversation with herself about the ethics of taking a product for free and then writing about it, or going on a blogger junket and writing about it, she has already lost the battle in terms of her credibility." She disagrees and so do I. How stupid. The habit of approaching the bottom-up nature of the web with a broadcast mentality won't. go. away.

It's the nexus of the Rocketboom (broadcast) v. ze frank (bottom-up) debate.

It's the nexus of the PayPerPost debate.

You will find it anywhere and everywhere people are trying to payloads of broadcast-world-type money in a micro-market-based, micropayment-type online world.

The old-world mindset says: I am a journalist or respected entertainer or influencer, and so you owe me your attention, your trust, your eyeballs. The truth is, we come to this space as nothing, and we owe one another precisely nothing.

Hello, but: My default is, I don't trust you--I don't even know if you're you without doing a lot of extra work. (Happy ending is on the way; don't get nervous...)

What is special is that we build relationships over time that create trust, that puts bias into perspective and make it meaningful and valuable. What we do over time is suspend our disbelief, become entertained, play, fight, love. Emotion and interest bridge us from node to node. And what happens over even more time is that I get to know you. For Real.

And even then, I don't trust what you say about everything. I probably agree with you about technology but think your a shmuck about women. I probably would take your advice on cameras but know you well enough to steer clear of your political advice. Whatever. You get the picture.

That's only one reason why payperpost is no big threat to the Great. White. Purity. Of. The. Internets.

The more models of compensation the better. The smart ones will win out. The less effective ones will be buried.

A few years ago, we supported one another financially much in the same way as sponsors are today. Bloggers would toss other bloggers money in the form of donations and gifts, sometimes every month. I bought my last laptop from blogger donations. I had all my kids' fifth birthday presents paid for and delivered by bloggers. When a blogger was in a jam, other bloggers bailed him or her out--Sometimes Literally.

Over the years, my donations have dropped 98 percent. In place of those, advertisers now pay to put some ads here, and clients have come here who value my opinion and work. It's all good.

There is room for good writing to be compensated on the net. We don't need Transparency Police. The self-correcting nature of the Internet will take care of things. And in the mean time, a few more folks get some gas in the tank and keep their utilities paid on time.

That's what I call a win-win.