One in four bloggers have written paid posts
A sizeable minority of bloggers have written paid posts, a survey by the Melbourne-based Problogger website suggests.
The respected site has been asking its visitors whether they had ever written a paid post.
The survey is still live, but with nearly 1000 respondents so far, 6.4% say they do them regularly; 13% say they do them occasionally and a further 8.2% say they used to, but have since stopped. The other 72.4% said they have never done so.
The issue of paid posts is a controversial one. Some brands pay bloggers because they see it as a good way to promote their products. Others do so in order to get links to sites which will boost their value in the eyes of search engines.
However those who do so and are found out by Google risk seeing the Page Rank of their site downgraded.
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Tim,
That’s an interesting figure, what one doesn’t know is the pedigree of the bloggers involved and the quality/traffic of their sites
We have an impeccable record with Blogger relations and have NEVER paid for a post. Ideally you want to give something back to the community, but we do that through promotions and exciting content.
There have been a spate of bad online PR examples, it’s a shame as a little foresight and common sense avoids the majority of these.
Cheers,
Geoffrey
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Erm, “one in four” of a self-selected sample of readers of a website about making money out of blogging, i.e. the “Pro” part of “Problogger”. Statistical validity in terms of the full spectrum of bloggers: nil.
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That’s an absolutely fair point, Stilgherrian,
But even so, I’m surprised that one in four professional bloggers have run paid posts. Even they need their readers’s trust.
Cheers,
Tim – Mumbrella
Or, Tim, flip it the other way. Even on a site devoted to blogging-for-profit, the majority (72%) have never been paid for a post.
I wonder, though, whether that means they wouldn’t if they got the chance? 😉
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Wow. That’s a bit startling isn’t it? It’s one thing to run ads on your site – I know it’s a far greater practice in the US – but the ones that I seem to come across actually state that they are ‘sponsored posts’ (or maybe it’s because it say that I’m noticing!) On my blog which is obviously NOT professional, I don’t think I could do that – I mean write an advertorial. I might test-drive a product but I would be honest in it’s assessment.
Seems a bit fake when blogging is more about personal opinion/experience.
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