smackfoo.com | I find your lack of faith disturbing.

From time to time, I’ve bumped into the odd cash-for-comment blog entry, with many views and thoughts on the topic.

Lets get this out in the open from the get go. I am not a fan of the concept and indeed believe it’s the worst possible option for a blogger¹.

Enter stage left, karma.

Thus, is is often the way with the universe, I happened upon a Whirlpool² forum entry today, entitled Pay Per Post.

As of this entry, a few people have already weighed in on the subject. The forum entry also sports a poll — whilst such polls are usually horribly inaccurate and hardly indicative of anything concrete, it certainly does illustrate the ‘general mood’ of bloggers in Australia.

Yes, No and everything in between.

After reading a couple of the responses, I decide to wade into the debate myself - firstly, the question:

“I’ve noticed quite a few Whirlpoolians have blogs, and that a couple of companies have employed such tactics with respect to forums (Jumba?, Koala?), so the question is: Would you allow someone to pay you to promote their service?”

It’s a fair question and, as I have indicated above, views on this are very divergent, with proponents coming up with often complex reasons as to why it’s a good thing.

The pied piper arrives.

So why do I feel cash-for-comment, a potentially harmless concept, is intrinsically bad? Great question — here, in part, is my response, broken down into it’s core elements:

“No. It is still effectively spam - the only difference is that advertisers have discovered a ‘cheap’ workforce - i.e. bloggers, rather than pay for ads. Paid-for-comment style advertising takes away from established advertising methods (such as adsense, text-link-ads, etc) reducing it’s worth (both to the advertiser and the blogger) in the process.”

And here in lies half of the issue I have with cash-for-comment. Some of the offers on the table from advertisers “seem” great. One gets to speak both good, or (occasionally) ill, of a product or service, can generally indicate the entry is paid-to-post and so on. The problem is that it is a very ‘cheap’ option for advertisers. Often the financial offer for the comment is trivial in comparison to potential traditional advertising revenue³ and it’s based on an assumption that readers either want to, or will read the entry.

The long-term affects of peppering entries with, what is essentially spam dressed up for the night out, is that it creates an ever increasing probability that readers will “switch off” and either stick around for a short while to see if any new non-advertising content turns up, or will react negatively to the spam and cease reading entirely. It’s a short term cash injection, at the expense of longevity:

“Whether any paid-for-comment posts are factual or not - it opens the blogger up to a situation where his or her ethics may be questioned, or their honesty. Breaking the faith of regular readers is just out and out the best way to cease being both relevant, or visited. I’ve yet to be convinced, long term, that it is good for anyone other than the advertiser.. who (unlike the blogger, stuck with the results) can simply move on to the next victim blogger.”

The Hare and the Tortoise

We all know the story - the fluffy bunny decides to show off, rockets off in 30 different directions and goes for the ‘quick’ glory. Meanwhile, our stubby legged friend in the flack jacket cruises past and ends up the victor.

Building a readership, takes time. I’ve been blogging on and off for over three years and am only now just starting to see an increase in readership and returning traffic. That is having a flow on in financial income from advertising, sure — but it’s doing so in a healthy growth pattern. I have purposely kept advertising separate from entries and content, yet easily accessible and within the line-of-sight.

This means you can roam the blog, or read my entries and the content stands, or falls, on it’s own merits. No cash-for-comment half-truth, spin or spam.. just a humble blogger attempting to improve his craft.

1. .. more on that, shortly (↩)
2. .. whirlpool is a large Australian broadband related forum (↩)
3. .. which people have generally become accustomed to and are less inclined to find it potentially offensive (↩)