Last week, Erik introduced me to payperpost, which was being debated on TechCrunch. Per their home page, payperpost offers the following for bloggers:
“Get Paid to Blog. You’ve been writing about Web sites, products, services and companies you love for years and you have yet to benefit from all the sales and traffic you have helped generate. That’s about to change. With PayPerPost™ advertisers are willing to pay you to post on topics. Search through a list of topics, make a blog posting, get your content approved, and get paid. It’s that simple.”
As I write, there are twnety-two opportunities available, four of which require a positive post. The pay per post ranges from $2.50 (the majority) to $10 (only one at this rate). The required word count? 10 to 100, with the majority under 50. I see nothing wrong in being paid to post. Journalists and advertisers do it all the time. Some postings require a positive post, which I could do without review first (and a positive one at that). Make it something I wholeheartedly enjoy and I will wholeheartedly endorse it, however. The majority accept both positive and negative reviews. That I can do. And fifty words? I can pull fifty words out of my arse on ANY subject in a minute or less. That does not sound so unreasonable. Hell, I am at 250 words with this right now!
Why not get paid to write? The argument at TechCrunch tends to boil down to integrity. Somehow, we as bloggers lose our integrity if we submit a paid post. I have seen the blogosphere, and for the most part, it ain’t purdy. In general, integrity, like grammar, spelling and coherent thought, is in short supply. Being paid to post is not going to have a major dampening effect on blogger integrity. Is it the pay itself? Does receiving money for services somehow sully one as a blogger? If so, there is a hell of a lot of Google Ad Sense code that needs to come down NOW! What about being a blogger makes you more pure than being a lawyer, burger flipper or a prostitute? Really, what?
I am not a shill. Just the other day, while I was driving my solid, dependable GMC Sierra K1500 crew cab SLT, with the luxurious leather interior and power everything, I told my wife just that.
“Wife,” I said, enjoying the cool feeling of the leather against my bare thighs (I was wearing shorts. Very rarely do I drive naked), wishing that the air conditioner had not died, “I am not a shill.”
“That’s nice, dear.” she responded. “But I still want you to fix the brakes on my Toyota RAV4 before you become a widowed shill.”
Being paid to post is not a bad thing; I would do it in a heartbeat if I had complete control over what I wrote and actually trusted the organization that I was writing for. And therein lies the rub for me: Trust. I know very little about payperpost, other than what they have on their web site. The one link they offered with external information about them is gone. Why? My guess is because the BusinessWeek online article, “Polluting the Blogosphere”, did not cast them in the greatest light, and they realized that bad publicity is NOT better than no publicity at all. Even without the bad publicity, I still would not trust them. Once again, why? First, they want my social security number. Second, they take ninety days to pay for services. Ninety days is an eternity with an unknown company. If I am going to whore myself for $2.50, I want that money immediately. And I am not going to give an unknown online company my SSN to get it.
Hopefully payperpost is completely legitimate, but I have no guarantee that they will keep my SSN safe. Even if they do not plan on using it for identity theft, or sell it to others who will, how do I know what sort of payperpost has in place to protect my SSN? I still have my VA letter apologizing for their little screwup earlier this year. Oops, your personal data was stolen. So sorry, please monitor your credit and accept our sincere apologies. Gee, I feel better already. Fortunately, that appears to have turned out okay. So glad I am not in the Navy or Marine Corps.
Identity theft happens every day. There is no reason to increase your chances of being a victim by giving out personal data to a questionable company. Payment for services happens every day as well. Still, I am not willing to risk another identity theft incident for a $5 payment that I may very well never receive, and I recommend that nobody else does either. I may not have integrity, but I hopefully have a somewhat secure identity, right?
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