Why I decided not to become a paid poster.

Although I've never been a huge fan of paid posts and understand why Google has decided to crackdown on bloggers that accept money for posts, I nonetheless seriously considered starting a blog which would feature the occasional paid post for several months. This might make me sound like a hypocrite, but I honestly thought I could do the paid post thing right. My idea was to start a reviews blog so that the paid posts would be essentially reviews of my sponsors' web sites and the paid content would fit in with the rest of the content more or less seamlessly. It would be no different than a sponsored TV show, I thought, and I promised myself that I would make sure the paid posts were as entertaining to read as any other posts. Google might not like my blog, but I thought other people just might.

Then one day I had an epiphany that changed my mind completely. I was reviewing Matt Cutts' series of posts on paid links; as usual, I agreed with a lot of Matt's points, but still had reservations about some of them. At some point -- I'm not sure if something Matt said really got to me or not -- I heard a little voice inside me whisper, "I don't want to be a spammer." Then it hit me like a ton of bricks: even if I managed to seamlessly combine paid posts with my regular posts and made them all interesting I'd still be contributing to the proliferation of overly commercialized content on the Internet. There's a definite place for commercial interests on the Web, but the more I think about it the more I feel that it is important to differentiate between the content and the advertising on a web site. Site visitors should know if they're seeing something just because a webmaster was getting paid to post it. If we look at my reviews blog example, the paid posts are posts that almost certainly would never have been written if I wasn't getting paid to write them -- instead of reviewing some deserving but obscure web site, I'd probably be writing about some get rich quick scheme or a company with plenty of money to burn. Companies with plenty of money to burn are very welcome to advertise on my web sites, but I've decided to keep my content my own. Of course, this decision makes my reviews blog seem a lot less likely to become lucrative so I may never actually create it...but at least I won't be churning out uninspired content for the highest bidder.

In truth, the paid links debate is something that will continue forever in all likelihood. The line between content and advertising is really blurry at times, and with ad blockers becoming more popular webmasters will be increasingly motivated to try to make money with their content in any way possible. One could use some of the same arguments that are used against paid links and apply them to affiliate links -- it's interesting that I have absolutely no qualms about throwing affiliate links all over my content if I happen to mention a book or CD or electronic gadget somewhere in that content. Such links are definitely incentivized, but the key point for me is that the links are just supplemental to the content of the site, not the cause or the bulk of the content. I would be mentioning the book or the CD or the gadget even if I had no affiliate links, so it's not a case of me junking the Web just to make a buck. It's a tough debate, and one in which I think a lot of reasonable people will disagree. As for me and my sites, though, we shall not disseminate paid content!