Blogging Dilemma – Getting Paid For a Post
I love Google! Almost every day they send me various e-mails with lists of web page and blog offerings for words and terms have previously selected. It is called Google alerts – set your alerts up here.
Anyway, since I work with merchant accounts, one of my alerts is for “merchant accounts.” Lately I have been noticing the exact same article showing up on various blogs. Here is an excerpt of the article:
“Trying to find a good merchant is not easy. Some of the charges are very high. I found that because I had to add these costs into my prices it made the whole process rather unprofitable. However, I discovered that this was because I used a particularly expensive company… F**** D*** is one such company. they provide e-commerce services as well as handsets for retail companies and restaurants and mail order companies. They do not open one fixed rate but decide on a rate which they feel is best suited to your business, you can get a quite online…”
When I saw this article the first time I wrote the “author” and asked them who bribed them to write such misleading information. Why was I so irritated by this article? The company suggested as a viable option for merchant accounts in the article is a horrible company; they really take advantage of merchants all over the country.
The funny thing is that the “author” of the article offered to post an article for me for a “small fee.” I did not take her up on the offer.
Then today I received an e-mail from a web site asking me to review them on this blog. There site has nothing to do with the content here and yet I said yes. So tomorrow I will be posting an article about Billy Bob’s Corn Dogs! Of course I am just kidding.
So what is the point of all this drivel? I want to make some points:
1. Instead of paying for posts that stretch the truth about your business just make sure you have an incredible and remarkable business. People will naturally write about you then.
2. If you are going to accept payment for writing a post make sure you know what you are writing is true. If you don’t know do some homework or decline the offer!
OK, I feel better now.
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Hi
I’m with you here, also because more and more people are regurgitating PR flim-flam as their own original opinion.
Me thinks it may get worse before it gets better, but some of us are working pretty hard to get it better.
Nice blog.
A
I’ve been thinking about finding companies, non-bloggers, who would be willing to pay to be written about on my site.
But, it would be labeled “sponsored post” or this week’s sponsor . . . that way, it’s an “advertorial” . . . oh, okay, in plain English, an advertisement.
I found the same article again last night on another blog. It was one of those blogs that posts just paid for advertising posts. Of course I wrote a comment disputing the claims of the article. I am not sure why this bugs me so much but it sure does!
Robb,
another way to look at the whole paying for post issue, is businesses really should look at the blogosphere and internet as a huge PR opportunity or niche PR opportunity.
They may need a writer, or marketing-writer, to interview them on the core aspects of their business and then turn the interview into articles and post to the numerous article directories.
The posts could also be sent to like-minded blogs.