Marc’s bad idea, and a personal matter
I think Marc Canter’s idea is, overall, a bad one because, even though his scheme provides transparency (yay!), as I understand it, bloggers who said bad things about a client would not get their contracts renewed (boo!); “Say nice things or we’ll stop paying you” makes you less trustworthy. I’m in favor of bloggers making money from their blogs, but not if I now have to worry that their voice may have been bought. (See Stowe and Jason for more.)
And I want to set the record (= the index) straight on a personal matter. Marc quotes me from a fun lunch we had a couple of weeks ago in SF. He told me about his plan. I told him why I thought it would result in coercing bloggers into saying good things about his clients. I not only that I of course want bloggers to be able to make money blogging, but I suggested variations on his plan that I thought would put money in blogger’s pockets without making us into shills. (Primarily, I suggested paying bloggers to blog about a product on the product’s site, with full transparency, for a limited time with a non-renewable contract. Is it a good idea? I dunno, but bloggers would make money and I think wouldn’t feel coerced into being positive.)
This is a tad awkward. Marc has generously apologized for running the quote and removed the reference to me. Thanks, Marc. I have therefore removed two brief paragraphs from this blog entry. one that whined about what I thought was Marc’s mischaracterization of my opinion and another that was slightly light. I have deeply mixed feelings about editing blogs after the fact (excepting for typos, misspelling names, etc.), but I’d rather err on the side of civility.
Categories: Uncategorized dw
Marc’s idea is to get money from advertisers to bloggers. The details, well they’re devilish to work out as you might expect. The better they’re designed and framed, the higher the quality you might expect from any pay-the-blogger program. By quality, I mean commentary that people will choose to read, re-blog, trust, and spread.
I like your idea of one-off grants or contracts. It eliminates some self-interest and the temptation to ingratiate.
Part of the problem is the direct connection between an advertisor/sponsor and the blogger. Magazines and other publications intermediate, creating a cushion, a distance between the parties. They launder money, making it clean by diffusion (dilution?) of connection (not all the money from an advertiser goes to one writer, it’s spread around) and by application of a professional ethics code.
Another issue is the one of editorial choice. Not just good or bad opinion, but choice of what to cover. While a journalist may propose stories, an editor assigns them to meet a publisher’s mix for a presumed readership. A blogger typically plays all three roles. By committing to write X amount about product/topic Y, you’re choosing to interfere with a blogger’s straight-from-the-heart and top-of-mind editorial choice. By buying a blogger’s attention, you’re distorting the mix of what makes that blogger attractive to her readers. So this may be self-defeating unless it’s a topic that the blogger would normally cover without any incentive.
This comes back to a blogger ethic vs. a journalist’s; a personal vs. professional code.
Bloggers write for themselves, as themselves, with few exceptions. You *are* your words as much as you *own* your words. Your blog is entwined with your identity, your personal brand, your reputation. Bloggers who make a public declaration of self-interested relationships (like your employer, your family, your church, your school) are being forthright with their readers. It is the sort of disclosure we make to friends, and potential friends, in our private lives. David, you know a helluvalot more than I do about situational ethics, so I’ll leave this part of the thread to you.
There is something refreshing and honest about a good weblog. When we hear a voice that rings true, that shines clearly, and feels solid, the blogger is breaking through that Fourth Wall, making a connection, establishing trust. Its value lies in its relative scarcity. Its purity lies in that incredibly short distance between idea and publication, absent filters or gatekeepers. That process that makes it nearly effortless to go from utterance to web is intrinsic to our trust, and to our attention. And that purity is worth guarding.
Nobody, Marc included, thinks a formula’s been nailed that combines cash with conscience. It may not exist. But I suspect it’s out there awaiting discovery. Those who master it will alter the blogosphere’s tail, the average blogger’s experience, more than Google Ads ever could. Once we understand how moneyed interests can pay bloggers, the next step will be to model that money’s affect on readers and reader behavior.
Wow, this turned into more words than I planned for.
Yours in blogging.
– phil
By way of full disclosure, Marc made me a delectable plate of pasta with sausage while we talked about this.
Opinions are like…
There’s an awful lot of hoopla surrounding Marc Canter’s recent announcement about bringing even more commercialization into the blogosphere. I’m …
But wait!
Weinberger almost has it right. He’s missing one key thing – which I’ll clarify below. First here’s his post…… I think Marc Canter’s idea is, overall, a bad one because, even though his scheme provides transparency (yay!), as I understand it, blogg…
I recently posted a blogger for hire on my site, which is a bit different from Marc’s concept. Basically, I’d like companies to hire me to use bloogging tools to get them closer to their customers by engaging them in dialog. As I propose it, clients and I would agree on their perspective and the key points they would like to communicate, but then I would have the freedom and good judgement to engage customers, prospects and interested parties in free and open dialog. Any company member would jump in and agree or disagree with what I wrote. So far, there are a few inquiries and no takers. I think the idea is a way to mentize a skill and an understanding of blogging without hanging the red light out in front of my door as I feel Marc is suggesting we do.
Two questions… (1) What is so different about a blogger flogging a product than a talk radio personality doing same? (1a) Why does it take Marc Canter to figure this out?
(2) Why can’t some enterprising blogger find a few clients who are willing to pay some “promotional” advertising fee for a couple months just start inserting testimonials in her posts, like a little commercial. For example…
Hi guys. Today I was watching John and Teresa root for the Red Sox and I noticed they were both prominently displaying beer bottles. When watching them windsurf at Nantucket, I never see and beer bottles, so I suspect these were placed for a reason. Additionally, John kinda sucked on his bottle deliberately rather than non-chalantly.
Hey, me here again, did I tell you guys about how I’m using Bosco’s Screen Share to help my grandmother with all her computer problems? Try it out and tell them I sent you.
My guess is that the placed the beer to draw a cynical contrast with President Bush. Bush, purportedly a former alcoholic, but private about his past problems, seems to be the candidate that most Americans would love to have a beer and watch the game with. But Bush doesn’t drink! Even with the world leaders like Chirac who we need in our coallitions, Bush does not drink. So maybe we can draw a contrast to Bush by having the beer bottles in the pool footage. I mean, look how we turned Mary Cheney’s enthisiasm for Bush (snicker) into a question of whether the Cheneys love their daughter. That was brilliant.
Sorry about the ad David. Just trying to show why we don’t need people thinking about this stuff.
Hired guns
There’s a lot of discussion going on among bloggers of all lists about Marc Canter’ s proposal to pay bloggers to write about a product on their sites.
Shel, when you write about a patron, are you going to acknowledge that you’re getting paid to express opinions and bring up marketing points?
Brad, your boldfaced comment is pretty clear it’s a product placement because it’s boldfaced and because it says we should tell them we sent you. Transparency counts for a lot primarily because it lets us discount your shilling.
Blogging may turn into talk radio. I hope it doesn’t. But, when the radio talk show host says “Brought to you by the good folks at…etc.” we know that it’s paid advertising.
But I have to confess something. A few weeks ago I posted about how Snapshot, a disk imager, had saved my bacon. I probably should have told you that Snapshot paid me $150 to say that. I said the product was great, but I left out the part about how it took me 1.5 hours and 2 calls to Germany to get it to work. Also, it screwed up the partition on my drive. So, if any of you bought the product on my recommendation, all I can say is: Hahaha. Looks like the joke’s on you.
How’s that feel? Does it feel like the blogosphere has been improved? Not to me. (Of course, I was making it up about Snapshot.)
Well, here’s a place where traditional journalism has it all over the blogosphere, almost: They’ve got a business office that deals with advertisers and an editorial office that deals with writing.
Yes, I know, that big wall between those offices has been poked full of peekholes, but the fact that the peekholes were created indicates that the wall was effective enough for someone to peek.
Now, you’ve got your companies like BlogAds, and that’s a step up. If you can get ads coming in without any contact with the writer, then the question of influence is moot, or at least mooter.
Josh Marshall recently had this to say:
That’s a sensible policy for a political site.
Now, if you want a similar model for product evaluations, you need a business agent. The agent does the intake from the companies and hands out the assignments in a random manner. (Probably you could make this a software function, if you wanted to give the same illusion that Google News gives of inhuman impartiality, but it would still be an illusion.) Call this double blind agenting.
Ethical questions get shifted to the agent.
Somewhart OT, but I’d like to see some of the core aspect and dynamics of blogging eventually become like the public television network(s) we will never be able to have .. to fuilfill a role much like what Euan Semple (and many other Brits) suggests is the role of the BBC … the loyal opposition.
Would bloggers ever get paid or make money somehow in that realm ? Well, maybe … but only if something other than a fully commerical, fully “wealth bondage” society is ever desirable again.
Bloggers getting paid
What’s with the Bloggers Making Money meme (Starting I think with a Making Money session at Bloggercon. Also JoHo, Battelle)?…
Hired guns
There’s a lot of discussion going on among bloggers of all lists about Marc Canter’ s proposal to pay bloggers to write about a product on their sites.
The purity of blogs.
I’ve noticed a number of discussions on the subject of using blogs to advertise suggesting the influential blogs will help to push your products. Robert Scoble thinks its fine as long as the blogger declares that they are advertising. Marc…