Can paid posting can make you a better blogger?
Posted in Search Marketing by jspirko on January 12th, 2007 
You may have noticed that I have begun posting some sponsored postings lately, in fact quite a few. I have hesitated to do so for a bit because as you know I can be quite opinionated and do not hesitate to slam something when I feel it is worthy of a slam, like the music industry and the movie industry for instance. Honestly the great thing about blogs is that people give real opinions and suggestions and there is no censorship.
Sure we may put adsense or other banner ads but the posting is pure and honest. Yet as an SEO and a Blogger I understood why advertisers would be willing to pay for this service so that end seemed OK. So I decided to look deeper and got approved at a few paid blogging services.
The result I feel is my blog is much better for it. First because I now can be paid per post I have a bigger incentive to blog several times a day vs. several times a month. There is no huge money in this right now but the extra money is nice to generate. Second because I must have at least one non sponsored post for ever sponsored post and can't do two sponsored posts in a row if I want to take two assignments in a given day, I need to do at minimum 4 postings.
This additional posting alone has been great for my blog, while I am no where near the top at Technorati for rank I have moved from about 150,000 to a Technorati rank of about 72,000 right now. I have picked up lots of links in the past week as well.
Another nice thing is I get assignments which spurs my blogging with new subjects and ideas, giving me more depth then if I just blogged about things that I found interesting enough to research deeper on my own.
Finally there seems to be little down side, today I turned down two assignments. One just did not fit my blog, despite seeming to be a good site and company. The second was supposed to be an "SEO Company". I say supposed to be because their site was terrible from an SEO stand point, all their content was in Iframes and Flash! The navigation was poor and the copy was bland and the design was definitely sub par for a company claiming to be a web design, SEO and Internet Marketing Service. There was no way I could review this company unless they had asked to be slammed.
So I turned both down and what happened? No one got mad, I just got a new assignment on a service I was happy to review. One of the other services that pays me to blog is even easier. They just post what assignments are open to be claimed and I pick the ones that I want to do.
Honestly I feel this is making my blog better, more diverse and certainly more active. I don't have to make any concessions as to my honest opinion and don't have to post on anything I don't agree with or feel is a good fit. I also always note any post that is sponsored as being so at the bottom so my readers can easily know which posts are unsolicited and which were for hire postings.
What is your opinion on paid blogging? Do you believe it can make you a better blogger? Or do you feel that a sponsored post, even when it is disclosed as a sponsored post is counter to the nature of blogging as we know it? Personally I have a much different opinion after giving it a chance,
~ Jack Spirko
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