Not so much a post but a question that I’ve been thinking about..
There’s a lot of conflicting views on the web on this subject and I would be interested in the views of people here:Is it ‘unethical’ to accept payment for a review or opinion piece on your blog, or to mention products ?
Or is the opposite true – a clear disclaimer that a full post or micro tweet is sponsored is honest and ethical and allows the reader to decide how to interpret the content.
I would be really interested in your thoughts on this.
I also asked the question on Quora and also LinkedIn’s Digital Marketing group.
The view from Smashing Mag (as one example) is that it is bad form:
(see paragrpah at bottom about ethical writing)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/28/we-can-do-better-the-overlooked-importance-of-professional-journalism/
(see paragrpah at bottom about ethical writing)
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2011/01/28/we-can-do-better-the-overlooked-importance-of-professional-journalism/
What do you think?
Related articles
- New Models for Web Publishing (readwriteweb.com)
Good question. There was a piece in the NY Times recently about dooce.com which talkd about some Mommy bloggers now using a scale of sponsorship:'Amy Oztan, who blogs at SelfishMom.com has an entire section explaining how she makes her money, including an extensive index of tabs she uses to alert readers to the economics of everything she writes. It starts with Level 1 — “The product or service mentioned was provided to Amy free of charge (or at a considerable discount not available to the public)” — and goes up to Level 13: “This is a sponsored post. Amy was compensated to write this post. While Amy’s opinions in the post are authentic, talking points may have been suggested by the sponsor.” 'Full article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/02/27/magazine/27armstrong-t.html?pagewanted=3&_r=1
hi GemmaThanks for the link, I hadn't seen that article. I think that's a very transparent system that Amy uses. Readers can choose to read or not (or to decide how they want to interpret whats written in any given post) on that basis. Seems very clear cut to me.