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The main difference I’ve seen so far is that tasks are e-mailed to you, rather than relying on you to go to their site and choose the tasks yourself. Also, you aren’t required to write glowing reviews of whichever site/service is requested, simply mentioning your honest opinion, and of course a few links, is enough.
This seems to indicate that only tasks that are deemed appropriate to your blog will be assigned to you, which makes it easier for you to write about, and benefits the advertiser as well.
PS The above text is my own, I’ve just re-read it, and it does sound like I’ve just written a suggested post. Nope, its all me :>
3:12 pm on April 12th, 2007 1
I’m going to check out both of the sites you mentioned, but I think the first question that occurs to me is, are you allowed to (or encouraged to) identify which of your posts are in response to such requests, and which ones are not?
If this is disallowed, I wonder what distinguishes such sponsorship from a kind of distributed astroturfing.
3:49 pm on April 12th, 2007 2
That depends, both on the site, and the individual advertiser who is requesting your link/review/’buzz’. Some require you to insert a logo indicating it is a paid for link, whilst others will not allow you to review if you start it off with text like ’sponsored by’. I’ve turned down a few reasonable well paid opportunities over at PPP as I didn’t like their site or product. (this particular post is part of the sign up process for Blogsvertise, so I will do them the courtesy of not inserting PPPs URL here, mail me if you want it. I dare say it will pop up soon in one of my other posts :> )
I’m planning to put mine into a separate category, but more to make it easier for me to administrate them than as a indicator to my readers.
Another option/something you can do in addition, is to add a site disclaimer (see the link at the top of the page), this sets out my policies, and possible financial relationships with sites I mention.
On this site, my own links normally have a simple anchor text like ‘link’ or ‘click here’, where as posts that are earning me money often have specifically requested anchor text, as this helps the site out in terms of SEO. For example ‘cheap product name’ is likely to be a paid for link.
I see your point though.
PS Great to see you posting regularly once again, though the X-Box authored posts confused the hell out of me for a few minutes :>