Another point which some people have raised is… so? Some people ask, why should you care? Who are you, the martyrs defending to the blogosphere? Blogging is being turned into this sacrosanct, which it isn’t. If I value my opinion, then I’ll be sure to be honest. But if I’d rather say forget it and then just go for some extra dollars, then that’s my prerogative. You’re wasting your own energy and just upsetting people by suggesting this is so corrupt when it hardly has an impact on anyone. That’s not my own way of thinking, but it’s not untrue.

Anyway, PPP has been good for me… Before I used to get about 100-200 visitors per day… Now I get well above 400 per day, and almost 50% of that is from PPP, PPP related stuff, or blogs which link to me because of PPP – like this blog

I agree that when you’re being honest, there is no harm in disclosing anyway. I also agree that there is a lot of potential for people to abuse the system. Though I’m not looking to keep it a secret when I make a paid post, sometimes I’d rather not mention it because I don’t want people to assume my opinion has been tainted.

Take for instance, this post about my interaction with people: http://shanthology.blogspot.com/2006/10/people-people.html
if you don’t want to read it all, it’s basically about an experience I had with a person I invited to be a guest at a show. The story is completely true, and I link to a web-service which I had used. The point I’m making in the post has nothing to do with the webservice (Voice123), but is about how I interact with others. In this case, mentioning PPP would have killed the flow and would have then put the focus entirely on the link.

Now, my regulars know that I PPP, but if someone wanders to my blog and reads that post only, they’ll might notice how effective the service was. But even though they don’t know I PayPerPosted, if they end up trying the service, they still got a completely honest recommendation from me.

What are my interests in writing anything? PPP gives me some topics and I pick the ones that I WANT to write about, where I have something to say. Same way I visit Google News or the National Geographic website and post about things I think are interesting. Where I actually get the topic from is immaterial. I never think “That’s boring, but it pays $3.00″. These PayPerPosts usually require 50, 100, 200 words, but I write much more than that.

There are tons of abusers, so I can’t speak for anyone but myself. PayPerPost is young and it’ll probably take time for the to improve the system, though I doubt it’ll ever be flawless. That said, I don’t believe it’s necessary to plaster a huge “Paid Advertisement” message/image that will make people scroll over the blog entry, as opposed to reading it, which is what I want (even though there’s no financial gain for me from people reading or clicking).

PayPerPost is not going to get up and leave, boycotting 1% of blogs won’t help either. More ideas for making the system honourable are needed.

I agree about the painful process involved in trying to weave it into the flow of the story, but must respectfully disagree with how easily you dismiss the importance of being transparent. If you are being honest about the opinion on the product anyway, what difference would it make if you let people know you were paid to write it?

Honesty and disclosure to me go hand in hand, by the way – I don’t think you are honest with your readers if you don’t disclose your affiliation.

If you really like a product, just post about it without getting paid. And lets face it, a lot of the stuff that’s advertised through PPP is not exactly high quality and I see a LOT of ‘Posties’ posting about things they clearly have no clue about and couldn’t care less about – but the copy they write is good enough and the links to the advertiser are there.