I get confused easily. I think its a personal character trait - I am rather accident prone, and have the oddest bruises at any given moment to prove it.
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Arrington. My initial qualm was the hype train he was…

Though, it would be nice to know if Techcrunch is using this backup solution and hear about their own experiences/problems with the service.

In reality it’s no different than Michael making a review about Carbonite hosting solution which is a Techcrunch sponsor. http://www.techcrunch.com/2006.....e-backups/

The more transparent one is, the more he builds credibility and people can believe his words - and the more blog gives value to everyone.

This pay to blog thing seems like it could be missleading to the readers as far as why people are writing about their service, so if I was an advertising site I would prefer a solution that would keep from looking bad on me.

I joined PPP less than a week ago and plan to join similar websites offering similar services. Why? DUH! I’m doing it because I love to discover new things and WOW! I’m getting paid.

I’m honest and credible - I don’t post unless it’s relevent.

These posts I would have been writing about are indexed now through these paying me companies, not google etc. No wonder they are peeved…! No text links ads or paid seach results to sift through during my traditional searches, and most likely the names coming on the first two search pages are older than dirt anyway…

Now I have a place to discover new and/or innovative software websites/services — what I was looking for in the first place!

Not sure how you can say anything negative about these businesses when you let TextLink Ads (another questionable seller of page rank) put your face on their ad on your site. So it is OK for you to make $$ promoting business, but not anyone else?

WTF?

I don’t know if I should thank you or not.

I own BlogPayola.com it is not a Virus.
It is just going to be a Blog Site to help bloggers make money.
BLOG PAYOLA IS A COPYRIGHTED AND REGISTERED NAME 2006-2007

Justin

I doubt he’s getting paid to post about PPP sites popping up all over the net, but you have to wonder about Mike’s logic here. By simply acknowledging these companies with a review he’s sending traffic their way. It appears that Mike is taking the “high ground” but every post he writes gratifies their existence.

It’s like when they were trying to shut down Piratebay.org. The site was virtually unkown before all the media-hype. As a result, they’re now one of the largest torrent sites on the web. Talk about self-sabotage.

a lot to many for a guy that hates the compeny.
is smoebody getting payed per post?
lior

“Misled readers.” Two incoherent assumptions here: that 1) blog readers are inherently naive or stupid 2) Sponsored bloggers will always write positive reviews and are essentially evil.

“Search engine pollution” - SEO has always been a competitive playing field. I can’t see how sponsored posts are different from the affiliate/CPM/text ads anyone has on their blog or website.

“Credibility questions around the entire blogosphere” - Tech Crunch takes a very macro-centered view of the industry, hence the blanket statements. IMO, the entire blogosphere isn’t affected at all and issues of credibility should not be tagged onto every blogger.

Blogging isn’t primarily a commercial business. Bloggers write for public and private consumption and what they choose to write is an expression of their opinion and speech. I don’t think they should be set in an framework with ISO-ish standards and prerequisites. Credibility should be an issue determined between the reader and the blogger in question. If you don’t like a blog or blogger, don’t read or link to them. Simple as that.

First off, thanks for the mention Mike. I hope that over the years you will see that responsible bloggers and review companies will disprove your fears of the blogosphere being corrupted.

Out of all the reviews I have seen come from Reviewme’s advertisers, it is very clear that the bloggers take their responsibility very seriuosly. The bloggers participating in these reviews are going out of their way to provide both the pros and the cons. Just like we would expect a reputable blogger to do.

Will there be people who’ll be less then honest? Yes, of course. But those are the bloggers that wont last very long. Especially in our system.

As for some of the comments about us being 5th in line. Your right, but we do have a large audience for this already, so at the very least we will have our niche. But, we also have features that neither Payperpost or Reviewme have. The one biggest difference is that we cater to both advertisers and publishers. Advertisers can post opportunities and Bloggers can post profiles. This will insure that more matches are made, so that everyone gets more work and more exposure.

One final note, about search engine optimization. Yes, we aren’t going to hide the fact that sponsored reviews will help with optimization. Links embedded in content are highly effective. But similar to Yahoo (which Google fully endorses) you are not paying for just a link but for a review. There is a huge difference. Links can be hidden. A review is right in your face. Very few blogs are going to sell out and risk their reputation linking to a crappy spam site.

We look forward to launching very soon! Thx for the support guys.

http://sponsoredreviews.wordpress.com/

What’s wrong with other bloggers then, if they do it with full disclosire..atleast we dont ‘profile’ websites, and get paid by them secretly…

On the other hand, as a reader of blogs, I would ignore any and all posts from a blog if I learned that the comments are being paid items. If there’s money, then the blogger loses all credibility. There’s a conflict of interest.

Just my 2-cents.