Payperpost has ignited quite a controversy in the last 24 hours with its offer of paying bloggers to write about specific topics as a form of advertising.
Payperpost is a new advertising company that is paying bloggers to write pieces promoting the wares of its advertisers. After posting a piece, a blogger can be paid what is currently $5 – $10 or so per post on the topic. It boasts a simple and clean interface.
But is this really a controversy worth worrying about?
There are some who wish there wasn’t any advertising on blogs at all. Even as recently as this morning, Dave Winer was complaining about advertising monies earned by Firefox on Google referrals.
The reality is that any of us that stakes a claim in the blogosphere as a “problogger” earns money for writing about something. It’s not a far leap to go from there over to paying bloggers to write about a specific topic – or even a topic proposed by an advertiser.
I fail to see the issue here as long as the blogger is properly disclosing whether or not its an ad.
And yes, we were paid for writing this piece.