Response from: Jason Darrow    (12/28/05 7:18am)

Torsten,

I'm uncomfortable with "Sponsored Posts" on my blog. If an individual or company asks me to review a product and I think it is good or at least interesting I'll write an entry about it. However, to write an entry that you know nothing about and have no real interest in is crossing a line IMHO. Blogs, Podcasts and certain IPTV casts all have an authentic fresh feeling to them that does not exist in mass media. That is the reason I'm drawn to them and, once again IMHO, is why so many others are as well. If we start polluting our blogs with sponsored entries we start to lose what it is that draws people to the blogs in the first place.

Jason Darrow

Response from: Anita Campbell    (12/29/05 5:59am)

Hmmm, sponsored posts don't bother me in the slightest, either as a reader or as a blog publisher. I figure most readers will put into context anything that is written in a sponsored post (as long as it is clear the post is written for an advertiser and no attempt is made to hide that fact).

Actually I am much more bothered by the flip side of the coin: all the large corporations that hire PR firms to send around offers of content that are really just disguised press releases, and try to finagle free publicity from poor hardworking bloggers who are either self-employed or slaving away at their labors of love. Or worse, the Fortune 1000 companies that invite bloggers to blog on their company blogs and offer no compensation! I hope bloggers out there are not falling for these attempts to pimp them for free advertising or free labor, out of some misguided notion that their blogging is somehow remaining pure because they are not accepting money. It makes me slightly ill to see other bloggers being used in such ways. Especially when I see them writing about topics that I know were PR firm set-ups (because remember I received the same "personalized" email which starts out by gushing about how wonderful my blog is, as did about 100 other bloggers).

I say if we bloggers can get paid, more power to us. Just make sure you write mostly about non-sponsored topics, from your own information sourcing and not supplied by a PR firm.