Is it wrong to blog for money?
I mentioned the other day how i found a new blog by a 20 year IT professional called Brian Heys. He has been writing some good quality thought provoking articles and im starting to become a big fan.
The latest post he has written is called Is it wrong to blog for money? and asks whether its wrong to blog specifically just for money. In particular, he has emailed two very popular blog owners who have thousands of readers and not one ad on their site. Im looking forward to hearing what they say about that.
I find the topic interesting as i believe there will come a point when blogs become more successful and want to capitalise on it. I believe that its still possible to run a great blog, make money and not sell yourself or your readers. However, it must be hard. There must be times when your short on cash and know that accepting a positive advertisement for $500 is gonna help pay the rent.
ReviewMe has brought this to the attention of bloggers in my opinion. People review websites in exchange for cash. A simple system which is proving popular with bloggers. ReviewMe openly state that a positive review cannot be guuaranteed however, is it really in any reviewers interest to give a negative review or even a review which highlights some problems of the reviewee’s website? Surely the next website owner that checks out your blog to see if it is suitable for a review will decide against you reviewing their site if your prone to be honest and give the odd negative review.
If you want to keep your integrity and still review websites, perhaps the only thing you can do is turn down websites you think you would give a negative review. Though that in itself might give the impression that every review you do is positive. I call it ‘The ReviewMe Paradox’.
This raises more questions :
Is giving positive reviews all the time selling out?
Is blogging with the sole aim for making money selling out?
Would you stop reading blogs who come across as ’sales reps’ and not bloggers?
From what i’ve seen, blogging solely for money doesn’t lose you readers (and vice versa).
Kepp yourself updating on Is it wrong to blog for money? on Brian’s site. It will be interesting to hear why these guys don’t include advertisements on their sites
Leroy Brown | April 12th, 2007 at 1:29 pm #
It’s absolutely not wrong in any way to blog for money. Blogging is not some sort of holy medium that some people believe that it is. It is merely a new ( newish? ) method of publishing information online. Some will go ad-free, but most are taking advantage of the opportunity to earn a bit of income from it. Blogging is hard work, after all.
Kevin | April 12th, 2007 at 8:40 pm #
Hi Leroy,
If you look at the article i referred to you will see that i said that it is not wrong to blog for money. I named my post that because that is the title of the blog i was referring to however my post we reffering more to the integrity of sites, specifically reviewme.
I am hoping to user Reviewme and sites like that hopefully in the future. What i was trying to say is that if bloggers always give positive reviews to advertisers, will their readers lose trust in their ability to give a balanced review about something
i do agree with what you said however as i said, that wasnt my point here :):)
JoLynn | May 9th, 2007 at 12:08 am #
I think that if you are going to be reviewing sites that it is only ethical that you are honest. First off, you are not doing the site owner any favors by giving only positives when they could improve their site based on the negatives.
Additionally, if you are a reviewer who only gives out positive reviews, I actually would not want you to review my site. I want to learn how I can improve, and if there are 10 or even 100 things that I’m doing wrong, then please tell me!
Your other question re: should you only accept sites to review that you know you will give positives only on…this defeats the entire purpose of the review. Why do these sites even need a review if they are in such great shape? Just for their own exposure?
These are my thoughts, hope they help! BTW, I found you through David at Pureblogging.
All the best,
JoLynn
Kevin | May 9th, 2007 at 12:17 am #
thanks for dropping by JoLynn. I personally dont want 100% reviews but im sure there are advertisers who do. I think that constructive criticism is very healthy. For example, Davids review of this blog highlighted the need for me to stop cutting off articles in the newsfeed.