I started this website with the goal of growing personally as I seek out methods of self-employed income and self-sufficiency for the purpose of getting out of the rat race. If this website happens to make me a little bit of money and aid me in that pursuit well then all the better. After all there needs to be some return on investment for all the time I put into this blog and not into something else. There is a big trend in the blogosphere of getting paid to write a review of a product or service. Bloggers who are trying to make some money with their blog have turned to these sponsored review sites as a means of quick cash. But at what cost?
I’ve been asked a couple times by friends of mine why I don’t do the same thing. I don’t know that I never will but for right now I’m not doing it. I feel that it cheapens a blog and it’s a bit insulting to my regular readers. I know that I would get annoyed if a blog I read regularly had a bunch of fluff pieces that didn’t contribute anything to the quality of the blog or to my own life.
That’s not to say that I don’t have affiliate links in some of my posts because I do. The difference though is that the actual article would be the same whether or not those affiliate links existed. The other difference is that when I mention a book or a service of some sort in a post it’s because 99% of the time I have personally read whatever book it is or used whatever service it is and found those things to be valuable in my own life. I see nothing wrong with recommending products that I actually use and possibly reaping a small reward from that.
So if you’ve been thinking that paid posting is the thing for you well then more power to you. Perhaps your audience won’t mind. Perhaps that’s because you didn’t have much to offer your audience anyway. Okay, I’m not actually being serious about that part but I would encourage you to give a lot of thought to the subject before you pimp out your writing skills for a few bucks. Consider the long term affect on the value of your blog. One way to approach this idea if you plan to do it is to tell your audience in advance that you will be starting to do sponsored posts on a trial basis to judge it’s affect on your blog. Serious blogging is a long term commitment and focusing on quick cash doesn’t seem like taking the long view to me. As I said earlier in this article, I won’t rule out ever trying this approach to money making but I have a hard time seeing myself doing it.