I wasn’t going to respond publicly about this (I figure my lack of new marshmallow creme category and my refusing to apologize for blogging for money says what I’m thinking), but now everyone but me has responded, and I’m nothing if not a conformist. ;-) Haha. I said over the weekend in pam’s comments that I didn’t feel the need to publicly respond to being, in essence, flamed, but you know… I’m a girl, so I wrote the post anyway over the weekend and have been ignoring my need to post it until now. I usually ignore other bloggers yelling at me from their own blogs (CTG’s not the first), because I figure if you have something to say to me, you should just say it. In my comments, in an email… but ranting about me on your own blog is just tacky unless you first take it up with me.
First, the rant that triggered the storm of poo (profanity in link).
pam’s preemptive response (prof).
wRitErsbLock’s response.
Amanda’s response.
Kate’s response (prof).
And now my thoughts. Some of this I already sent to CTG in an email, and some I was going to post in pam’s comments the other night but decided my comment was too long.
Here’s the thing. I asked y’all a while back whether the paid blogging thing was ok, did anyone have any problems with it, etc., etc. Here are the comments I received when I was *inviting* negativity if you had any to sling my way.
I think you’ve done a very tasteful job so far. :) Earning more money is a good thing.
I wondered what that paid blogging thing was all about. Thanks for explaining.
I think it’s great, and I like the extra posting. You make money! You do it now! And write to me sometime, trixie! :-) I’ve been too busy to email too though so I can’t complain.
Also and back on topic, I actually like the times you link to useful stuff, like the blinds and the business products. I clicked over and read stuff, even.
I think you do a good job with the paid posting. I started the same thing just about a month ago (Kate’s a good recruiter). I’ve made more than I thought I would and have just recently started making even more because it did take so long to get established. But my own posting has increased on non-paid topics as well. I’ve had no complaints and noticed my commenting increased — which really means that people actually DO comment now.
Honestly Sarah, I don’t even notice when they are paid posts. You’re doing a great job.
And I, personally, love that we get more “SarahK†in the whole deal!!!
clicky clicky good. sarahk good.
Wonderful!! I am so glad for you! :-)
Not one negative comment. A few neutral. Most positive.
I’ve been very up front about the fact that I’m posting for money. Before I ever started, I put up my sitewide advertising disclosure policy. It has been updated to make it clearer. There’s a nice little button on my right sidebar, at the top, right under the links to the various services I use (and the Dubya book) that links to the disclosure policy. The disclosure policy is linked on every page on my site, including individual posts, because all of my pages contain my sidebars. Oh, also, that “so you know” page is listed right at the top of my blog, next to the home and about page links.
I also finally got my blog in order. Fixed the comments, upgraded to the latest version of Wordpress, got the new theme personalized, made sure the theme works in Explorer, Firefox, and Safari, all that just so I could make it more pleasant here for everyone. And actually, I couldn’t justify the time I was putting into that if I hadn’t known I would be making some money off of the blog soon. I didn’t even have time to post, let alone fix all of my issues. You would still be reading a wonky site in anything other than Firefox were it not for paid blogging.
Then I put up this post telling everyone exactly what I would be doing. Before I ever started.
Right now, I use three paid blogging services. They’re all different. Linkworth finds posts for me, and I can accept or decline them. They always provide an image link that I can use at the end of my post, so they never demand that I not disclose that it is sponsored. Sometimes I use the image, and sometimes I don’t — it depends on the post. Linkworth assignments usually come with wording such as “we would prefer a positive review but we’ll leave it up to you.” And the most important part of that is, “we’ll leave it up to you.”
With PayPerPost, I look for the opportunities myself, and I don’t take an opp unless I really want it. I only take opportunities for things that are on my mind (home improvements, anyone?) or things that will help me post a story I’ve had on my list of things to blog for a while and know I will otherwise never get around to posting. I am very picky. The post in question in CTG’s rant is about a PPP opportunity. I had read VK’s post about the same website, but I had actually not realized that it was a paid post. Then I saw the opportunity at PPP, and I was thrilled. I loved the website so much and was already building a kitchen in my head. After I dug through the website, knew in general what I was going to write (my next kitchen), and made sure I really liked it, I read the rest of the offer. And I noticed that I had to include an image in the post… one that looked exactly like the one in VK’s post. So I went back and read VK’s post more closely because I still wanted to take the opp (if it was a $7 opp, I probably would have passed, but this was more than four months of hosting fees), but I didn’t want to in any way seem like I was copying her, and my idea wasn’t the same as hers. We didn’t write from the same angle (she talked about why her husband doesn’t want a Wii — a tragedy, that — and I talked about our next kitchen… not the same post, even if we’re promoting the same website.), and there were a few required points that we both hit on, but if you ask me, they were both well written. Then again, I’m biased about my *own* blogging. Because I’m awesome.
PayU2Blog is the only service I use where I cannot turn down assignments. But they are easy. I just work one word or phrase into something I’ve been wanting to blog about but haven’t had time, and I’m done. Occasionally, I’m given phrases or words that I wouldn’t otherwise use, but I just look at those as a chance to be creative.
I also have an Amazon Associates ID. I don’t throw around random links to Amazon just so y’all will buy something through a link from my site and I’ll get a commission. Before I had the Associates membership, I normally didn’t bother linking to a product I was talking about. Now, I actually link to the products with my ID. That’s the only difference there.
If an advertiser doesn’t want a sponsored post link, I consider it sufficient that I have clearly pointed out to y’all several times what I’m doing and that I have clear links to my disclosure page. I don’t feel the need to spell out to y’all which posts are paid posts. It’s a big fat duh that y’all know what I’m doing (I have never tried to hide it), so I don’t need to point out when I’ve been compensated. I’ve invited questions, they’ve been asked, they’ve been answered. To me, continuing to point it out would be insulting your intelligence. It’s not that hard to figure out if I’m being paid for inserting links in posts. Note that I didn’t say “paid to write a positive review.” Because if there is a demand for a positive review, I include an image at the end of the post. If the assignment does not demand a positive review and I write one anyway, I don’t necessarily include an image.
Here’s the other thing.
If I weren’t blogging for money right now, I wouldn’t be blogging at all. I don’t have time. But because of this, I make time. I have so much more *non-paid* content now than I would if I wasn’t blogging for money, because I can’t justify blogging until we get moved if I’m not making money from it. And my blog would sit for weeks with no new posts, and all of you would go away. And our blogs are our lives, so I would be sad if you all went away. Some people can go days and weeks without blogging. That’s them. But that’s not how it is for us. It’s how we met, it’s what we do sitting on the couch next to each other in the evenings, some of our closest friends are people we met through blogging, we plan every trip based on where we can get free internet access, and we will probably blog all our lives. And the paid blogging is my justification for doing the non-paid blogging right now.
Don’t get me wrong. When we get moved and unpacked and all that, I plan to continue the paid blogging. I love doing it. It forces me to write things I never make time to write. It forces me to pay attention to the blog when I otherwise might ignore it. It forces me to be a little more creative when I write my entries. And once we’re moved and unpacked, I’ll be a blogging machine. I’ll have so much non-paid content that y’all won’t know what to do with yourselves. You’ll be like, SarahK! Too much quality blogging! We can’t take it! And I’ll feel very sorry for you for about negative five seconds.
I do not lie. I was married once to a chronic liar, and I do not hold high opinions of liars. If y’all think I’m being dishonest about something, you can tell me so, and I will set you straight for impugning my integrity. If you’ve read here any period of time, you know I’m not like that, and I’m offended if you don’t know that. This whole thing about it being “dishonest” is a crock of baloney. I’ve been so up front about it, I gave you an opportunity to tell me you hated it, and no one said anything. If you don’t gripe even when I ask you to and instead hold it in until you just can’t take it anymore, then I can’t help you; it’s not my problem — it’s yours. I’ve never once demanded you read a post, and I know y’all are smart enough to find the scroll bars on the right-hand side of your screens if you want to skip a post. I don’t tell you to click the links (though many have and have been glad they did), and I don’t tell you what to read. So when I read something like, “I SWEAR TO ALLAH I WILL STOP READING BLOGS THAT HAVE PAID POSTS!” coming from another blogger, I am flabbergasted. You know, I hate profanity. I still read a few blogs that contain profanity. And I don’t sit over here on my blog and yell, “If CTG has one more f-bomb on her site, I swear I will never read her blog again!” Even if I felt that way, I would just quietly go away. I wouldn’t feel the need to rant about it.
As to the feeling cheated by reading a paid post thing… That baffles me, because like I said, I make the paid links fit my content, not the other way around. And imagine how cheated you would feel if I wasn’t posting for dollars right now. ;-) You would have zero content until we got all moved in to our new place. I know *I’m* having Richmond withdrawals (take your time, Rich, I would never tell you how to run your blog).
BTW, feel free to complain in the comments to this post if you have a problem with my paid blogging. I won’t stop doing it, but I might take your comments into consideration. But I’m not going to try to cheat the advertisers by having a special category that says, “Don’t read me, I’m a paid post,” (this would also cheat you out of reading my awesome stories you would otherwise likely not read, because you’d skip them). I’m quite sure you can figure out by scanning a post whether I’ve been compensated for doing it, and if you choose not to read those posts, in most cases, it’s your loss.
That’s about all I have to say on the matter for now. I’m not trying to have a flamewar with CTG (I save my flamewar energy for Rachl Lukis!). I like her, I like her blog, all that.
UPDATE: Kate wrote a great post about how to properly do paid blogging so your blog doesn’t suck and you aren’t making your readers angry. These are all things I *think* I’m doing. I make a very conscious effort to do it the exact same way (it’s almost as if she was in my head, or as if I learned from a good example).
