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.

# 89 agreed
# 90 agreed

Mike,
I know you are having fun (we all have), but you are hurting yourself and tc. Move on. As i said earlier, ppp and their shills DON’T MATTER.

I’m out

Jesus please HAS ANY BODY LISTENED TO THE INTERVIEW? please here is the link: http://www.talkcrunch.com/2006.....3-million/.

Drug dealing? Mike Arrington what where you talking about? This is the last time I am reading techcrunch, as I write, I am deleting Techcrunch from my netvibes page. Please if I launch my company Mike don’t write about me, I don’t care about venture capital because I think that is your target audience.

I can’t believe a writer of your stature that had such followership has these archaic ideas and laughs at others? God. Anyways you just won payperpost a customer.

I am convinced that you believe everybody should read your articles because they are interesting. Interesting? your articles? you must be kidding yourself. People only read them because you write, so and so company raised money. And the same way people like the show “deal or no deal” or “Jeopardy” they want to know who raised money not because you review articles well. Ok just a test, which company have you review in the last year that has gone to be very successful? From you speech with Guy Kawasaki you don’t even like mySpace.com, an incredibly successful web 2.0 company.

One last thing before I’m out….

(I have never done a “payperpost” or “reviewme” or any other of these pay for blog article deals)

I don’t get why you can’t understand how people can “post” something to their blog that they don’t care about.

People pump gas all day for money. People flip hamburgers all day for money. People wash dishes all day for money. People sell cigarettes all day for money. People do a lot of things that they do not like to do - for money.

I believe that most people that make $5, $10, or $15 to write a paragraph for this service need to make some money….and I think that they could probably find a worse way to do it.

I win.

Michael,

Please take a look at this article by the NYT regarding Johnny Carson and the lessons modern advertisers can learn from his on air sponsorship of various products on The Tonight Show (hope the link shows up)
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01.....ssuserland

If not (Google: Johnny Carson sponsors) and pick the top search item.

I’m not trying to put modern bloggers in the same league as Johnny Carson, who was an acknowledged master of this genre.

However, there are many similarities and many lessons that bloggers paid to post articles can learn from the late Mr. Carson.

He wove the advertisement into the show and sometimes called out sponsors and sometimes did not. Advertising in the TiVo generation is moving more and more to product placement ads based on this older model perfected by Carson and many others.

(See Wikipedia for many examples of Product Placement without disclosure: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Product_placement )

Bloggers are engaging in product placement advertising. Some do it with a positive review, some weave it into blog articles that have nothing to do with the placed product and others wrip the item to shreds. I just read a blog about a PPP blogger that was ripping on PayDayLoans, and she was paid to do that by the PayDayLoan site.

Would they have been happier with a positive review? Yes, Probably. Do they get benefit out of negative review? Yes as any Marketing Professor will tell you negative publicity can be valuable too.

What we are seeing is the merger of product placement advertising into the internet (its already in movies, and TV, and free web pages, and video games, baseball games, even in the Olympics) now its moving into the Blogosphere.

Bloggers that get better at incorporating product placement ads will earn more money and will learn to write better blogs.

The question over the ethics of any type of advertising will always be a question that is debatable with or without disclosure.

Was it ethical for Johnny Caron to do paid spots for Lucky Strike cigarettes? (he died of emphysema)

Did Johnny Carson spoof and make fun of his advertisers? Yes, that was part of the magic.

Is there a difference over then and now? yes

Back then the lines in the social contract between an entertainer were less blurred.

Advertisers are getting much more agressive these days, looking and testing out new ways to penetrate through to audiences that know how to tune out advertising.

This advertising funds the entertainment. This is true in the macro entertainment world and its becoming true in the ‘niche’ or micro entertainment world of the blogosphere. Just like a company might advertise on TV and separately slap their brand on little leage jerseys they are doing the same thing on large websites and small ones.

In the case of PPP they attract small medium and large advertisers (I’ve seen ads from fortune 500 company through PPP-actually almost in the top 10 of the fortune 500.) Could they have gone somewhere else to shill their products? Of course. Could they shill their products in marketing niches that light up the internet from one end to the other? Apparently so as they did it.

I’m all for more transparency in corporate behavior. As I see it though most people are not interested in being bombarded with transparency facts. For example, you will not see a number of pop up bubbles appearing on a movie screen during the middle of the movie pointing out that the Coke machine in hte background was a paid spot or the Motorola phone that the actor is using in the middle of a live action sequence was not only donated but came with a nice stipend from the company that provided it. You also may not see the film studio pointing out that they set a mininum stipend amount to 3 cellphone providers and provided the placement to the highest bidder.

People want to see and watch the movie. They want to see the content. There is not much difference on the internet.

And the beauty of the situation is that people are smart enough these days to be able to read between the lines and identify product placement situations most of the time. When they can’t they probably didn’t see the product at all and the advertising of the placement failed.

Same thing goes for the blogosphere where its even easier to pick out the advertising.

From another perspective, its important to note that the value of these services is not soley in the shilling of the product. There is also value in the words and links.

Mike, you are out of your mind.

I have REVIEW sites, products, and services for PayPerPost. And by review - I mean positive OR negative. There have been several occassions when I thought the site, product, or service sucked - and I said so, and I got paid.

I have a disclosure policy. It clearly linked from every single page on my site.

If there is an opportunity from an advertiser that I cannot support - and the opportunity is “postitive only” - I simply don’t take that opportunity. It’s not that hard to figure out.

I’d say 90% or more of the opps are “neutral” meaning I can say whatever I want about the site, product, or service. All of the ones about PayPerPost are that way. For examples of posts that I did where I was negative about an advertiser, see the links below.

I give my honest opinion every time. If a product sucks - I say it sucks. If I think it’s a waste, I say it’s a waste. If I like it, I say I like it. If I don’t really care, I just say what they offer and move on. It’s not hard to figure out. Really Mike. Try to have somewhat of an open mind and stop thinking that you know exactly how it works - because you don’t.

Here is my disclosure policy - again.

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

Here are posts that I have done for PayPerPost where I said that I didn’t like the site being promoted - and I still got paid for it.

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

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

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

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

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

I got paid for all of those - except the top “life coach” one, because I just wrote that a few days ago. The others have been paid already.

I do not have to compromise my morals or my opinions to write for PayPerPost.

And, as a point of clarification - I am *not* on the PayPerPost payroll. As a freelance writer (which is all I really am as a “Postie”) I am considered an independent contractor, and am not on the payroll.

BTW, Mike

I get paid. So do you. I blog. You blog.

The point I was making before was *why* PayPerPost pays me - not just that they do. They pay me based on the work I do. The more I work, the more they pay. The less I work, the less they pay. I can’t just leave some code on a web page fore 6 months and expect to collect a check each month. I’m actively creating content and connections for PayPerPost’s clients. That is a service I am providing, and therefore have earned compensation for it. I was pointing out that I feel more morally comfortable collecting money for actually creating something than just hoping people click on some bouncing gopher to try to win a PS3.

I went to the site for their show. The first episode promises to take us through trade show set up! That’s sexy!

Great post.

If rocketboom put a Starbucks coffee cup on the anchor desk would you rip them as bad. Product placement is product placement… in all forms of media. I don’t necessarily like it but it looks like its here to stay. The only people that can honestly police the system are the content consumers themselves.

For those of you who simply think Arrington has an Agenda related to his Advertising, I think you’re wrong.

People, PPP = Paid Pagerank Pollution. That’s really what it’s all about so far as I can see. I’m stunned nobody has used the “P” word in this thread so far. I mean, that’s the Point of all this, isn’t it?

The Pagerank algorithm doesn’t care if the reviewer said something sucked or not. All links are good links, more or less, in the same way that all publicity is good publicity, more or less. So it makes perfect sense to allow bloggers to pan the product they’re linking too - just so long as they link to it.

I’m presuming that most of the PPP customers are being advised by their SEO people (or are in fact SEO people themselves) because PPP links seem like a perfect way to drum up pagerank in a way that must be very difficult for Google to defeat. Of course over time they will figure out some algorithm for detecting PPP shills, er, agents, er, whatever they’re called, and will mark down their pagerank accordingly, but there will always be more willing to play the game. (For those of you new to this game, your site’s pagerank depends strongly on incoming links, and it is the #1 traffic driver on the net)

Now, if everyone declared on their posts that they were PPP agents in a distinctive and clear way, then Google could automatically discount those links as meaningless for the purposes of pagerank calculation, which would mean that the smart SEO people would stop recommending PPP, and eventually advertisers would pay a lot less per post.

So, I don’t think PPP will do that.

But Google has so much data they could just work it out algorithmically. Ie if PPP got *too* popular Google might just start watching for where known PPP shills link to, and detect new shills based on noting which other blogs link to the same place at the same time. All known shills could them have their pagerank docked from then on (pagerank is transferable via links, so if a source is “tainted” the easiest way to tweak the results is probably to decrease the PR of the source). However I suspect it would have to be making a genuinely large distortion in the search results before Google would care, and in reality Google no longer cares so much about search quality since they probably sell more adword clicks against bad natural results, and they’re so far ahead of the others on search quality at the moment it’s not really to their advantage to “try harder” in this regard.

So if Google doesn’t really care, what’s The Problem?

The problem is the collateral damage. I consider a business to be morally wrong if it destroys more value than it creates. And paying others to do the destruction for you is even worse. Currently PPP is slowly dragging down the average value and pagerank of all blog content - blogs are becoming just that little bit less trusted as sources of unbiased information, which is what everyone is looking for. However, balanced against that are the PPP agents who actually put a bit of thought into their post, are honest about the fact that they are being paid, and create little nuggets of value.

My strong hunch is that at the moment PPP does more harm than good. If they forced their agents to be transparent then it would swing back the other way and on average they would be creating value, but then they would probably make less money. So let’s watch and see what they do.

Right, I’m now going to go plaguarise myself and post this comment on my personal blog, which incidentally, is linked to the “Blog Honour” pledge page, which is an appropriate market response from those worried about their own personal pagerank dilution.

#92 - fu*k off wanka, im glad you deleted TC so we dont have to listen to your bullshit posts and it also means you will never have read this

#94, #95, #96 - stfu. you blog, but your blogs shit so until you have 100K+ readers, take a hike.

The reason payperpost sucks. Let me tell you why they suck

1. They do not categorize who can blog on a product. i.e. I want my product about hair shampoo written about - I get people who have blogs about fking “flying planes” writing about my hair shampoo ? Why the F#$K would I want people who have no idea about shampoo reviewing my product on a blog that is devoted to planes - absolutely stupid.

2. The majority of people writing have some crap “blogger” blog that has 0 readers and all of a sudden gets peoples money for writing about a product that 0 people are going to read because their blog is shit - they should at least limit their bloggers to unique domains and also at least categories. If I post about “dogs”, I want people with half a clue to comment on it.

3. They dont tell you the lower limit when you first pay your fking account. Yes, I have used payperpost. No I will never use it again. WHY? Because I transact money - $40 bucks to be exact - then I am told that the minimum post limit is $11 and the minimum payment is $4 - THANKS FOR TELLING ME THAT AFTER I AM CHARGED TRANSACTIONS FEES

Overall, I was not in any way impressed with the service. Shit bloggers, shit posts and the overall experience worth $3 Mil or whatever they received? They can take their shitty payperpost & shit rockstartup.com and shove up square up where the sun dont shine.

Judge out

Erm… Just curious. Has anyone noticed that the title says amoral and not immoral? They mean very different things. Amoral actually makes PPP out to be a saint.