FW: The selling of the blog
From Scoble:Jeremy Wright sent this one along: tech bloggers
wanted for AdverBlogging
That's interesting. IT Observer says they have a million visitors a month
and all you need to do is blog over there. They'll deliver you the traffic
and you get to put your own ads on. That's weird. What do they get out of
it? Oh, you really will be getting your own traffic through your own skills
and they are hoping that your readers will click around on your blog and
visit their stuff as well.
Thanks, I'll pass.
Marc Canter has been pushing a different money-making scheme for bloggers
lately. This is interesting, but I won't partake in it. It's hard enough for
my readers to factor in my Microsoft bias (if you are here for the first
time, I work for Microsoft).
I have a policy: I don't have any other financial instruments here. If I
link to Amazon I don't do it with an affiliate link, for instance (you can
join their affiliate program so that every time you link to Amazon they'll
track who comes there from your site and they'll kick back a portion of
every purchase made). I think all that stuff really messes up blogger
credibility.
If you lose your credibility it'll be very hard to get it back. I expect
that readers are gonna start treating bloggers very harshly. Learn from my
readers. Everytime I even get close to criticising a competitor my readers
give me a hard time. Justifyably so too. But it'll be 10x worse if you
aren't upfront about who is giving you money.
Personally, I'd disclose EVERYTHING you were making money with. If you're
getting paid, or getting gifts, or doing anything that could constitute a
conflict of interest, then I'd disclose that. And, I will disclose my
business dealings here as well (or gifts that I've received).
By the way, I love that Jeremy and Darren Barefoot are selling their
services
to the highest bidder on eBay. I wonder what I'd get. Probably 1/10th of
what Jeremy's getting. Maybe I'll hire Jeremy to do the blog for a day. Oh,
yeah, I'd disclose I was doing that too.
posted by Andrew MacNeill @ 5:45 AM
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