Ryan McFarland

A writer for the Wall Street Journal sent me an email… (links added by me)

Hello, I saw your blog posting about PayPerPost and sponsored reviews in general. I’m writing a story about the company and an advertiser that uses the service. One question that’s coming up is the issue of advertisers being able to “rank” posts one a one to five scale. I’m looking for the opinion of the blogging community: If an advertiser asks for a neutral review, will a blogger be afraid to be critical for fear of earning a low ranking? Or will the blogger trust that if someone aks for something neutral, they’re not afraid of a little constructive criticism? Your thoughts are
appreciated.

Regards,
Simona

Simona Covel
The Wall Street Journal/Small Business Link

To which i replied…

Simona,I think the answer will largely depend on the blogger’s motive. There is a growing contingent of people that blog just to try to make money. Some have dozens of targeted blogs. I think that group of people would give positive reviews to be sure of a positive ranking from the advertiser. But the other large group of bloggers arein it for the reason that blogging started - to share stories and information. They just want to make a few bucks here and there so probably are more likely to get a true review.

Either way the review goes the advertiser will benefit by having a link from the site. I think that is far more valuable than the review. For instance, I wrote a review on a website that provides information about savings accounts. I doubt amy of my regular visitors even read the entire review or followed the link. You may be aware of all this already… But my pagerank 4 site linked to them which tells the search engine that they must have some value. This will push them up in the search engine rankings so that anyone searching for “savings accounts” - well I just checked. They are #1 in Google’s results. A wise advertiser would know this and not really care if the review is good or bad - as long as they get that link.

I would love to read the article you write. Please let me know when it will be published and I’ll try and find a copy (I live in southeast Alaska and the drugstore does not get many copies).

Ryan

I really would like to read the article even if my thoughts are not included.