Wow! Is it cold in here?

Hey, he spelled your name right.

(i.e. take what you can get.)

I have to admit Ted, you are somewhat of a cheeseball on camera.

My view is still this: People need to be honest. If they are honest about their opinions, then there is no ethical problem. That responsibility falls on the blogger, not on PayPerPost. I’m always honest when I blog, I disclose the posts are paid (although I don’t think it’s necessary to disclose as long as I am honest), the overwhelming majority of my posts are not paid posts, I try to keep it interesting and relevant, and the collected funds will go to charity.

Besides, blogging is not some holy sacrosanct as it’s being made out to be. It’s information, it’s personal discussion, it’s ideas, and honesty is important.

They’re amorality, wow, that’s a pretty big accusation.

*amoral

if you hate them so much, why are you giving them all this free press- if you didnt report this story it wouldnt have made mcuh of a difference

Jack - yes, that’s a good question. My hope is that they are eventually pressured into requiring blogger disclosure. There is hope for them. They aren’t evil.

[VOR] - I have no problem admitting that. I don’t claim to be a professional television personality. I’m just a guy busting my butt and giving you all a peak into the insanity. I won’t hide who I am, you’ll see the real deal…. cheese and all.

AWESOME! Great way to get the word out! Thanks for that post!

I am a PayPerPost Postie - and I am offended by the connotation that what Ted Murphy and his crew are doing is amoral and illegal “gets hauled off to jail”.

Here are some of my thoughts on the subject:

http://chadwsmith.blogspot.com.....rpost.html

http://chadwsmith.blogspot.com.....hical.html

http://chadwsmith.blogspot.com.....-evil.html

http://chadwsmith.blogspot.com.....mpany.html

And here is my disclosure policy:

http://chadwsmith.blogspot.com.....olicy.html

Jesus these videos suck ass. I want to punch that guy from PayPerPost in the head. Typical hick from the midwest. I hope PayPerPost BURN.

HOLY COW!!!!

“They aren’t evil.” - M. Arrington.

Does this mean I can take the devil horns back to the costume shop?

well…. I feel the love in here. Cute videos.

Mike, I don’t think thats going to happen - if you look at them vis. ReviewMe, PayPerPost relies on “smaller” bloggers who wouldn’t get many offers, while ReviewMe and others go for the “more high-end” market - $40-$1000 a post. ReviewMe blogs are generally larger so they have a rep. to consider compared to PayPerPost blogs where there isn’t much of a rep. at stake.

Personally, I don’t really care about the whole thing, its the bloggers decesion and if a blogger is looking to earn $200-$500 a month in extra cash by using PayPerPost they can go right ahead for all I care. Like you said in previous posts , few bloggers that I read/ blogs that I run are going to risk their rep. over an extra $500 a month.

Well, controversy creates buzz creates cash. If we’re going into the whole conspiracy theory thing, what makes you think this post isn’t sponsored by PPP? o.O

BTW, I saw you had some new writers at the site so if you need one more, let me know

Oh Mr. Arrington. I can’t wait until ReviewMe does something like this and you give it all the praise in the world. Grats on being two-faced.

Mike, I think you start losing credibility when you wish for a persons jailing for an Ethical question that doesn’t even have a consensus opinion.

And, in the light of disclosure, I am a payperpost employee. So my opinion, much like yours, is biased.

Eric, I was not being serious about wanting Ted to go to jail. I think most people will realize that.

Why am I biased?

“Goes to jail”? Are you seriously hoping the founder is imprisoned?

You think an entrepreneur for a ethically questionable business? You seem to be confusing ethics with the law and questionable with explicit.

Some find ethical errors with your work, Mr. Arrington.

Wow. Don’t even know where to begin but this guy is jackass. The evil — and yes I will say evil even if Arrington won’t — cackle upon learning the folks at DFJ will fund them shows the whole story. There is excitement and then there is evil greed cackling through and that’s what Ted was showing. Ah…the hubris. Ahhhh…..the class. Also, please - -if you think setting up for an old school mid-level trade show is a bore and doing 1999 things like guerrilla marketing at the Today Show — trust me, it is more tedious to watch. I don’t care what the business does…I find the people involved too self absorbed to care.

Here we go.

Well, it didn’t seem like a joke, since none of the rest of the post seemed like a joke. And considering how much it seems you hate PPP, it seemed possible.

HAHAHA This comment thread is more fun that reality tv!!

Eric - Do you really think I’d continue to cover PPP if I thought it was completely beyond hope? And do you really think your CEO would continue to send me news if he didn’t love the coverage? Think. Then write.

why was my comment removed? Here it is again:

[deleted]

Michael Arrington: Think. Then write.

Wise words indeed Michael.

Glad to see you’re still writing your openly biased (as per your WSJ interview comments) advertising based blog, just like our bloggers.

isn’t it a free market?

All these opinions are biased - this recent wave of PayPerPosters to this post is because PayPerPost members are being paid $10 to write a post about this blog post

Jack - The opportunity is neutral as is every opportunity that PayPerPost sponsors. The bloggers can say whatever they like and still get paid. If they think the show sucks they are free to say so.

really? Ted, is that accurate?

The ironic thing is how often your sponsors get plugged on your own site (and even occasionally without a proper disclosure that you are desiring).

I’d have to agree that PPP is evil, but it’s not very different than other tech sites (maybe like this one).

I don’t really see where the controversy is!

Many bloggers already agree to ads on their blogs whether they endorse them or not.

The code of ethics rests with the writer. If he/she agrees to do a review the responsibility of being honest etc is with him/her ultimately. In any case, if they are selling their souls, they will probably not survive long since their reviews will ultimately lead them to a fall from their viewers choice for poor judgment or value of their articles (i.e. the product suck yet the reviewer is raving about it)

The real reason the whole blogging phenomenon took place is because there was finally a choice outside of what was imposed on us by the mainstream media. The captive audience of the TV, radio, newspapers, magazines no longer had to buy only what they were sold. If the mainstream media had better to offer we will see it eventually but personally I have not seen it yet.

I watched Micheal Arrington on a webcast with an interview with Guy Kawasaki and there I first heard his aversion toward pay per post.

I liked Mick for his incisive (seemingly unbiased writing at that time) and I have his rss on my netvibes page, but with his vermin against payperpost, I don’t have such high regard for his articles again.

His personal attack as per payperpost is unwarranted, he does not want little bloggers to chip away the blogging empire he wants to build, knowing fully well that if payperpost is established, the advertising dollars that should come to him would go to them. Maybe this assertion is just a paranoid one but Mike, you should continue hailing innovations not attacking them.

It is the bloggers responsibility not payperpost for disclosure, disclosure only gives credibility to any review and even without disclosure, historically some bloggers write sense while others write nonsense. Arrington covers some companies because they raise lots of money not because they have value propositions, not that this is wrong considering to raise money there should be some value (but can that be said in a bubble?).

So if a blogger reviews a product because he truly believes in it, his recommendation would be valid and his readers would always come back for more recommendations. But if like Mike, who occasionally covers companies because they sponsor his articles, then people who see no value proposition in those companies stop reading his articles. A road I am going down on, reading more of “mashable” … I don’t really care who raised a zillion dollars …

Totally accurate. All opportunities that we pay for promoting ourselves are neutral, and we happily pay people to say whatever they feel appropriate about us.

Michael~

Every opportunity that PPP post about themselves is indeed neutral. If we think it sucks, we can say so, and I have!

Just to be clear: What Jack said is that you are paying your users to post about this post on techcrunch. Is that accurate?

Yes it Is

Wow. That’s…amazing.

Where’s my cut?

I am not getting paid.

Just using the journalistic skills they teach in all those courses

LOL - Make a post about this post and get $10 to link to your own blog and this video site you already linked to.

It would be cool if the YouTube Guys or Kevin Rose (even though he does diggnation) did something like this.

Like sand through the hourglass, so are the days of our web twilight zone.

Michael…

“Wow. That’s…amazing.

Where’s my cut? ”

Does that mean you are going to join pay per post?.. or are you already a member?

woho! gotta love this gossip

Is this intelligent looking guy Ted really connected to PPP? Hilarious! Totally awesome.

Bob, Take a wild guess.

No, what Jack said is not at all accurate. We don’t pay people to post comments on other peoples sites, digg or anything like that. Anything we pay for is strictly limited to the bloggers blog.

There is an opportunity to read this story and write a post about it on their own blog with their own opinion.

ok, well, thanks for the links I guess.

Well, we put up an opportunity that was neutral about launching RockStartup, then you wrote your piece - I guessed you were one of our posties now!?

I don’t think there is anything wrong in being paid to write an article or a book for that matter. After all fiction writers get paid to write fiction. The difference is that everyone who buys their books know it is a fictional story.

I have not read about the PPP folks but in essence they are one of the new publishing houses of the net or the bloggosphere whatever we will end up calling it.

So Mike,
You blog here about your sponsors every so often and that get’s pushed through syndication for the viewers who don’t actually visit your site. So if you have advertisers with lousy products which you say are fantastic, aren’t you doing the same thing?

This is a pretty good promotional view on their part.

Thats what I meant - Bloggers are being paid to link to this post and I am guessing that is what is accounting for this influx of PayPerPosters to this site

By “on TechCrunch” - I thought you meant - “about TechCrunch”

“ok, well, thanks for the links I guess.”

So where’s MY CUT? lol

It’s called mutual publicity

Dear Michael,

Besides the fact that the movie is wonderful, I just wanted to commend you on the cutting edge web 2.0 technology of your blog. When you roll over SPHERE IT, a SNAP preview of SPHERE IT comes up, and then when you click on SPHERE IT, SPHERE IT itself comes up. Great work!

See, I think it’s the commenters who love drama that make the issue worse than it really should be. Notice, how they won’t link to themselves, and besides Eric, leave a last name. It’s simple, Ted has a product that is a new business model, and is working quite well. No one has seen it before, and since it does have some moral issues attached to it, it’s going to play out in a controversial manner. Mike runs a popular blog. He doesn’t like the company, but that doesn’t make him an asshole. He’s entitled to his opinion, but if it were such a crappy company like you all *think* he says it is, would he really be posting about it? I think these debates between Mike/ other bloggers and PPP is more than needed, so PPP can figure out what is going to work right for everyone. Contribute to the debate, don’t distort it.

-Jason L. Baptiste

Ted/Michael: get a room guys, geez…

Good comment Jason.

Hi Michael,

What is your gross revenue on this site and what do you net?

Thanks

I did not know about Techcrunch until I stumbled on a link in del.icio.us about 1 hour ago. The note said something like Techcrunch reviews the best product on the web or something like that. It grabbed my attention enough to check it out. I then read about PPP and just visited their website and I like the idea a lot I might even use it for own product Sell It Mobile. At the end it is clear that Mike does not like PPP but at least his website did do the job as advertised in the note I read on del.icio.us except in this case it worked the other way.

I love all of this controversy.. it’s like theater! I’m sure this is why many of us keep reading. If it was all dry Web 2.0 stuff, we might get lured away, but the whole soap opera of the crazy people who read this site and the mud slinging (like that YouTube) video keeps us coming back for more

@Jim

Yeah since you are an apostle of disclosure Mike, whats ur gross revenue on this site and what do you net.

This thread seems interesting but a digg format would have been more appropiate to debate on this issue so one can direct a reply to a particular post.

Mike said on his kawasaki interview that techcrunch uses wordpress with plugins, is there no plug to convert readers comments into digg style comments without going to the digg page?

ccongrats for saying something is evil like you never done an evil thing

this is corporation man

Looks like you are jealous of PPP cause you didn’t think of the idea yourself. Stop hating on them and let them do their thing.

Michael - what can I do to piss you off? I am thinking about offering bloggers $.50 per post about my company - with one catch - they cannot disclose! Will that get me a write up?

I was going to also say that I am also willing to build a bunch of ajax apps and widgets so my site takes a minimum of 8-10 minutes to load and only has one indexed page in the serps. And…I will use a 32 trebuchet font on my one indexed page - but that remark might really piss you off.

For the recortd - this smart *ss loves TC!

I think Mr. Arrington is off base in his ultimate conclusion on PayPerPost. I see both Mr. Murphy and Mr. Arrington fighting over the same sandbox for different goals but that’s besides the point.

I would definitely advise anyone that is just recently looking at this debate to go to the link the Mr. Arrington offers up with the interview of the PayPerPost team.

Listen to the interview in its entirety and I think it the pros and cons of all sides of the argument will be readily apparent.

The bottom line is that PPP has the potential to make a good deal of money.

They can and will do this because they currently provide a service in the marketplace that is cheaper than any of their competitors in the industry and they do so with a community of collaborative bloggers (self included) that get the message out.

If you want to launch a grass roots campaign, and you want a great deal of buzz for a relatively low amount of money then this is the industry to start it in. It should not be the only place you advertise but it can definitely do some interesting things for you and bring in results if you align the proper goals.

You can probably say that about any marketing campaign and there in lies the rub, if you use this type of tool poorly your not going to get much bang for the buck.

I would consider myself a PPP advocate and a critic as I’ve seen some of the best and worst that they can provide in the industry. I think that the real challenge here is that this industry is filling up rather rapidly.

Mr. Arrington’s complaints about PPP are very nice and ring with an idealistic spirit, but the industry is growing very fast. As an analogy Mr. Arrington is providing the sound of one tree falling in the Amazon, but its just one tree and there is a falanx of bull dozers maneuvering into a flanking position all around the entire forest. The analogy is apt if we consider the question will a parking lot be built or a new Utopia, however, this is the internet and not some virginal forest that supports the ozone layer and so pollution isn’t really so much of a concern.

The media has been polluted with self interest since it was created. A savy person will learn to read between the lines and extract the important information thorugh the media buzz.

HMMMM, I duno about this one guys! lets go upstairs to the video goal judge!

BTW, why shouldn’t Michael get paid? Why should Michael sit there all day and write for companies?? That doesn’t make sense to me. If you want him to write about you, he first takes into consideration if you are worthy to write about then he builds his post on constructive criticism.

Nothing wrong with Michael getting paid. However, with PayPerPost, there should be disclosure…. but then again, who cares! Only a few blogs are worth checking out, like TechCrunch, forget the rest because the posts they write are not worthy to begin with.

AND, who knows, maybe this whole drama is part of the plan to create publicity.. meanwhile, back at the lab, Michael is getting paid lol (kidding)

Hi Michael,
Yes, 1938 got me too….I feel like I had arrived. When you make something, there will always be critics.

Naked critics are a little scary.

Well, I don’t think the most interesting issue is whether ppp is non-ethical. The ethics of many, many businesses can be questioned.

I believe ppp’s model is flawed b/c of the double adverse selection that the business faces. Who will use ppp? Bloggers who have trouble earning something. In other words, the untalented ones. And which businesses will use ppp to p(b)itch their products? The ones that otherwise wouldn’t get any attention and don’t have money for high quality marketing.

So there you have it: bad writers pimping bad products. Doesnt sound like a bizz we should even care about. Mike, I admire your passion and willingness to crusade, but I advice you to go after more interesting targets.

PayPerPost is AWESOME.

This really is very interesting. My first reaction was the same as Michael’s. If they are not disclosing it feels very low class. I put them in the same part of my brain where I have (the old) Gator or some other kind of adware type thing.

But upon further reflection… I see a parallel in the world of off-line media. You have magazines at the supermarket check-out that look like editorial content, but are really just big sponsored content. You have DJs everyday saying, go here or buy this, I love this car or Scores or whatever, and we all know this is sponsorship, even though they don’t say so explicitly. And the difference between these folks and the NYTimes is that the Times has the Public Editor telling us where their lines are, and (some of us) expect more from them and so read things differently. (If you read the Times you will know they have begun to create many more sections and magazines for the purpose of creating more sponsorship opportunities.)

So what’s happening here is that — like commerce in the early days of the free web – this is another step in the maturity of the Net. All those things you have off-line you will have online and through their reputations and how your own experience matches to what they say, you will decide whether you give it credibility or not. We have to believe (and hope) that pure shills will simply not get the audience of people with quality things to say.

I would also like to note that I feel in these comments some serious backlash against TechCrunch. I sense that there are people here who read it every day, monitor it, feel that it is important, and resent the hell out of Michael for what he built. And this resentment is coming through in these posts.

Grow up Mike. Don’t bash the company, talk about how you hope the founder goes to jail, and then say you don’t want to talk about it again.

If you didn’t want to talk about it again, you wouldn’t post about it. You can’t have it both ways.

Well Jake,

There are good products out there that are made with a very small budget, with that said, Michael, would u profile those ’startup’s, even with no VC funding and who otherwise can’t pay you $5000 for a post?

This whole debate is hilarious - paid placements / advertorials happen in all forms of media - it’s just the way the world works. The fact that it’s happening on blogs is just a small and inevitable evolutionary step. It’s time for a reality check Michael - this is not going to change even if Ted goes to jail.

Regarding disclosure, that’s not Ted’s / PPP’s responsibility- it’s the blogger’s. Ted is simply an agent, facilitating a simple transaction between two willing parties. If disclosure is warranted, well that’s between the blogger and the advertiser, not Ted / PPP. If a blogger wants to whore himself out, so be it - he has that right - it is his blog after all.

You can’t expect Ted to be the supreme dictator of what constitutes appropriate disclosure for every blog in the known universe. Issues of journalistic integrity belong to the blogger, not the third party advertising conduit.

Peter,
agreed. But these products didnt make it b/c they were pushed by shills, but because they were great products.

I predict that ppp won’t help any product to succeed, but merely help poor products to get a tiny bit of attention. And nobody cares about that, as i worote.

Just my 2 cts.

Jason L Baptiste,

I linked to myself - like 5 times.

I used my full name (the W stands for Wesley, if you must know).

I am completely in favor of the PayPerPost model - and disclose like crazy. Even if you completely ignore the link to my disclosure policy - I barely go a day without mentioning and linking to PayPerPost in some way. I’ve made videos explaining how I make money by blogging thanks to PayPerPost. In fact, some of my readers (as few as there are) have complained that I talk about PayPerPost too much.

I’ve earned quite a bit of money from PPP - not like thousands or anything, but a pretty good amount for being a part time second job that I can pick up or forget about as I please.

My readers are not turned off by the fact that I write for PayPerPost, just that I write about them too much. I’m just really happy to find a way to make money through my blog while still retaining complete control of it, and not having to surrender control of parts of my website to Google Adsense, Yahoo!, or some other ad company that puts banner ads all over my site that I can’t control. There are a few banners on my site - but they are for causes I support. The iTunes button is the only one that could possibly make me money, but I picked that one out because I like Star Wars:Clone Wars. And I haven’t made any money off of that. So it’s a control issue in I get to control exactly what’s on my site - and I get to control exactly how much money I make.

If I want to make $2.50 one time, and that’s it, for life. I can do just that.

If I want to submit 3 posts a day, picking the highest 3 available - I can do just that, and make hundreds if not over a thosand a month. It’s all up to me. There is a cap, of course, on how many posts I can do and how much money is available - but as within the range of 0 and whatever the 3 top opportunities are, I can choose how much to make.

It really puts a lot more power into the hands of the individual bloggers instead of the mega-corp ad sites. You won’t see any “Hit the duck, Win an iPod” ads on my blog any time soon.

Is there anyone who can come up with an argument in favor of PPP that isn’t “I like it because I get money”? Preferably someone who isn’t on their payroll would make this argument.

They are 50-75% cheaper than their competitors in this industry niche.

I had to return to this post, because I took the advice of @brettbum and went on to voice interview with Ted and the venture capitalist - Josh.

Truth be told initially I thought it was an idea that wouldn’t fly but on listening to the first minutes of the interview, I appreciate how good it is. Ted is a really a smart guy … though he could lose some weight .. ha ha ha.

Seriously, the most important thing in business in a knowledge economy is marketing, production is no more as important, unlike in the industrial age where the Rockefellers, Carnegie, Mellons, Firestone, Fords that had the factors of production were the most successful. Now success in business depends on the acronym for advertisement which is AIDA: awareness, interest, desire and action.

Payperpost creates awareness for small companies that don’t have the finance for major campaigns and even for big companies that want to test the market with new products.

One example is when I started using google in 1998 in Nigeria, Africa( it was not as popular then, actually I was more used to altavista which was incredibly slow and paying about 4 dollars an hour for dial up, I had to switch to google which was faster and brought very relevant search results. Before then I had tried mamma, webspider and a host of others). Now the story here is that google remained relatively unpopular in the states until after 2000 or so when it went into an agreement with aol, it was actually as if google was begging for the partnership (I remember watching that on cnn in Africa). After this partnership, google’s popularity soared and now aol would be begging for a partnership with google. In essence aol gave google exposure.

I am starting a small company probably this month that creates virtual pets for social network pages and I definitely would use payperpost to spread the word once I am ready to launch instead of begging Micheal Arrington, or mashable’s kevin ashcroft to review my product. (payperpost, I hope with 1000 dollars, I can run a small campaign?)

Well done, Ted Murphy.

Arrington,

I linked to 5 posts I did outlining why I prefer to make money on PayPerPost than through banner ads (which I could do - I’ve done it before). PayPerPost pays me to give my own opinions in my own words. Banner Ads, Adsense, Yahoo, et. al. pay me to put code in my site that I don’t control.

Let me break it down for you this way.

PayPerPost pays me for work I do.

Banner Ads pay me for partial control of my site.

I find it more moral to be paid for actual work that I do than for whor… um, selling out part of my site for other people to control.

Nice blinking monkey at the top of this article, btw.

Just an addition to my last post. I got to know google by recommendation from an attendant at the cybercafe where I accessed the internet (no home connection in Africa). There he saw my frustration with altavista (I hope I remember correctly, I occasionally used lycos) and he said he could direct me to a site that did search better.

So personal recommendation is what drives markets not the traditional form of tv advertisement. I personally would prefer to use a product that a blogger has written extensively about than one that I became aware of by seeing an internet ad or a tv ad.

Payperpost is actually where the future is going and I wish I had money and could invest in the company immediately.

Sorry tC i still am listening on the interview on your site and I just want to say hi Josh Stein is absolutely brillant. Hey Ted no insult to you but you weren’t articulate during that interview. Josh Stein hit the nail on the head, now I see what it takes to be a VC and I see why Mike Arrington isn’t one.

If Josh Stein happens to come across this thread my advice to him is to kick Ted from CEO to maybe CTO and take over the board, he has a clear view of where PPP should go.

Hey Mike the internet is not everything, we don’t live on the internet and your purple cow whatever is sooooooo unrealistic. We have cars not just one type of car and all of them have to market to survive. In marketing there mustn’t be sufficient differentiation for a product to succeed. I mean there is target, walmart, 7eleven and even today a company can start a retail chain and with proper marketing become successful.

I wasn’t happy at the lame points MA made during the interview and the guy from business week who is he? I now see why I don’t read BW’s crappy articles, because they are written by people like him.

@84:
“I find it more moral to be paid for actual work that I do than for whor… um, selling out part of my site for other people to control.”

Chad, not to sound rude but I hope you do realize that they are indirectly controlling a part of your site which you otherwise would fill with a blog post about your life, your pet, a new web startup, whatever it is you blog about. If you weren’t getting paid to literally put a banner ad into your own words, (perhaps with a touch of personal critique) you would probably blog about something else, therefore the control is implied.

I mean I take no sides in this argument as I believe people should choose whichever form of advertizing fits their taste, but there is a clear contradiction in that statement. I realize its a matter of technicality but you can’t argue for either the banner ads or ppp selling out and the other as being a superior advertizing engine. They both imply indirect control of a part of your site but appeal to different users differently.

Chad -

Yeah, I get that you get paid. I totally get that part. PPP pays people. I’m with you.

What I don’t understand is how you and others are ok with writing about a product without disclosure, for money, and the post has to be positive. That’s the use case I have an ethical problem with.

To say that this is more ethical than the actions of sites that have advertising on their site, clearly paid advertising, is something I do not understand.

Please. Seriously. Explain to me how being paid to pimp something you don’t believe in is ok. This just isn’t fair to your readers, who think that you are writing your actual opinion.

Mike - payperpost sucks royal penis.

Judge Barry out.

Your argument reminds me of Jerry Falwell (you) vs. Larry Flint (ppp). And if you continue down this path, you could find yourself preaching to a (much smaller) choir - or at least a much different choir - and that would be bad for all of us.