There has been a lot of hype lately about how paid reviews need to be disclosed, if not, banished from the face of the web all together. I have been pondering the moral implications of this new form of blogging for quite some time now. I want to know what you all think about paid reviews and what you think are the differences between paid reviews and working directly for a blog.
When you get hired to a blog as a writer you are given topics and categories to choose from and are instructed to write about them. When your blog is approved you receive compensation for writing that blog. I am sure most blogs want and require their writers to be honest and unbiased but I get the feeling not all of them are.
Now I have yet to find any sites on how it is wrong to work and get paid for writing whether it is for a newspaper or a blog. The only time I was able to find something close was if you use a program like PayperPost and are reviewing topics that you chose and topics that you write about. I can not see the difference between getting paid for working at a company as a writer and getting paid for writing about things you personally agree with. Well actually there is one. When you work for a newspaper or company you are governed by many rules and many restrictions on what you can and can not write about. With your personal blog you are in control and always will be.
If I am going to write a post I fully agree with no matter what, what effect does me being compensated for it have on the post? If I work for a company or another blog I am getting compensated for my post but I might not even be picking my topic. Just some food for thought. Now leave a comment and let me know how you feel about these two ways of getting paid for blogging.
Well i don’t think it’s actually worth paying someone for a paid review when there’s many people out there who would do it for free. You could probably get a better and more detailed review from someone who actually wants to do it instead of being paid to do something and that would mean that they’re only doing it for the money whereas the one who does it for free is doing it for you, not for the money so you are most likely to get the most out of that person.
Somehow I think that in the end, many people who blog about something they don’t agree with will end up showing in their post that they don’t really care about the topic anyways and just wanted the money, and so people probably won’t listen to what they have to say. Yes, it’s morally wrong, but they don’t care either way.
At any rate, I think that it is not morally wrong so long as you can pick a topic you are comfortable with and can endorse the advertiser’s product or service without sounding half-hearted or not meaning it.