Marc continues the dialog regarding his modest proposal to make "100s of millions for bloggers" by creating a "pay for ink" business.
At first he is dismissive of the arguments that I made (as well as others) regarding "crossing the line" between observing what is happening in some market and, alternatively, explicitly blogging on products because you are paid to do so.
As I understand Marc's contention, he (or some company he is thinking about setting up) will stand in between the individual blogger and the sponsors, and he will distribute the funds based on product mention, but with no specific effort to create positive spin. So the blogger will just collect his micro payments for micro mentions, and there is no foul. And in this way, the blogger stays pure.
Marc Canter
[from
Marc's Voice: REbutt, enlighten and grimace]
The purity of bloggers is what we want. AND the honesty. The moment our bloggers start shilling us - is the moment the whole thing is ruined.
WHAT IF this works - that's what the MOST terrifying. WHAT IF folks could REALLY say what they want and STILL get paid?
- we will not, I repeat, we will NOT be censoring, limiting or telling our bloggers what to blog. No one believes me on this point. They just can't seem to fathom the notion of someone paying to be lambasted - but gee, maybe it's true.
- why is everyone so upset? Perhaps because I'm challenging this hi-falooted notion of blogging. Perhaps becuase I don't buy that blogging and bloggers are the saviors of modern day democracy, journalism and media? Perhaps blogging is just a viral web based phenomena - that's found a home in lonely, information thristy customers who dig the honesty and difference from what they're used to? Why the brain pondering introspective nuances and conversations? What's wrong with having fun, making a buck and getting on with it?
As I sat across the table from David Weinberger he said that this idea would pollute the purity of blogging - that's all I needed to hear.
Right on!
Let's pollute the hell out of it.
I am not so concerned about the purity of blogging -- I am eager to sell advertising at Corante blogs -- but I don't like the idea of selling space in sentences, just over in the margins.
I agree with Marc's contention that the current model of blog advertsing means that only those with real influence can make money -- influence either from large readership or very select readership. But I think that is how the world works: its not just a convention around blogs.
We can experiment with all sorts of interesting sponsorships -- I will be announcing something along those lines later this week, in fact -- where sponsors dollars do something more interesting than buy a rectangle of real estate on a blog page. But there still needs to be a hands-off policy regarding the words coming out of our mouths. And while make seems to be saying "You are free to say whatever you want," I think I hear him saying, "but if you want this check, please talk about 'product X'."
We have sponsored blog entries here at Corante (although they are not running in this new template, at the moment) so maybe that's all that's needed. But in such a case we explicitly mark the sponsored entries as such. We even were making them a different color, so they would stand out (again, currently disabled -- soon to be back).
So the the skinny on this is: I don't think that there will be enough in it for advertisers to pay, the results will be meager, and potential for loss of credibility for bloggers will be too high.
1. rick gregory on October 25, 2004 05:28 PM writes...
I've not read Marc's full article yet, but I think his logic is wrong. While he's not explicitly telling people what to say, he's certainly incenting them to talk about certain things.
Marc would need to do a few things for this to work:
1) The client company (say Apple) will need reporting on how many times their product (say the iPod) is mentioned throughout the network. IF they buy, say 1,000,000 mentions, they'll need some way to tell if they are getting them and will likely want some data mining abilities from this data set.
2) The system will have to have some anti-gaming provisions, otherwise I can post the word iPod 100 times with no other text in the post and get rich!
3) Apple will value an iPod menioned on, say, this site more highly than on a blog that's never read. since, well, it's more influential to have your product mentions actually read by someone. All mentions aren't created equal...
This sounds like the same dynamics as an ad-driven site where traffic (mentions) = money. Nothing wrong with that, but how is this system better than something like Adsense?
Permalink to Comment2. Suw Charman on October 25, 2004 05:32 PM writes...
Aw, and I so wanted to be a saviour. Damn.
Permalink to Comment3. Richard MacManus on October 25, 2004 10:44 PM writes...
I don't think it's about quantity of product mentions, it's more about *quality* of product mentions. If it was about quantity, then it'd need A-Listers to succeed. The idea, as I understand it, is to recruit bloggers who have a reputation for quality content - and let them write about a certain product, and see where it goes. It's an experiment and I for one am interested in where it leads.
I don't see how it could affect a blogger's credibility or integrity, if the content is clearly marked as being 'paid for'. Sure the reader has to take what the blogger writes with a grain of salt, knowing that the blogger is getting paid for it. But readers should *always* read things with a critical eye.
Permalink to Comment4. Zbigniew Lukasiak on October 26, 2004 04:54 AM writes...
How about treating it the same way as a paid questionnaire? That is the bloggers are paid just for writing about it, no matter what is their opinion - just like people answering marketing polls. Since they are to be paid, they need to be identifiable anyway so the spam problem would be a bit constrained here. One still can imagine 'cooperatives' where the blog entries would be written automatically for a number of bloggers, but this requires quite much of cooperation and should be visible.
Companies do pay for such questionnaires - so they could pay for an online form of them. If they are confident about their product they can expect some positive marketing, and if they are open minded they can employ the negative entries for improving their product.
Permalink to Comment5. TDavid on October 26, 2004 01:24 PM writes...
Perhaps let me be the dissenting voice in this thread that thinks it's *not* a bad idea what Mark Canter is proposing. In fact, there are services which exist out there already to do this (just have to poke around a bit).
As for what Jason Calcanis is posting and doing fingering specific bloggers at his blog that don't pass his sniff test, I'm not so sure about.
Epinions, WayPath, Lockergnome ... all sites that utiltize affiliate text links in and around content (and effectively, BTW). Calcanis's crusade is well-intentioned but misguided and comes off looking absurd considering the abundance of websites (and blogs too) that are already inserting advertising inside blog entries effectively for advertisers.
Maybe he should be looking for ways to improve his site's advertising effectiveness instead of running his own blogger advertising witch hunt?
The question every reasonable person should be asking here is: if *you* were paying for advertising would you want your products/services quarantined from relevant discussions?
I wouldn't.
Perspective is everything here and bloggers have to remember that every single reader is also a potential advertiser.
That's the real shame here. Canter's focus obviously is on providing advertisers with more bang for their buck and at the same time providing blogger's some means to at the least cover their expenses (glass half full mentality). Calcanis focus seems to be pissing on the concept for both parties (glass half empty mentality) because he feels IN HIS OPINION that this is deceptive advertising. And Calcanis adds disturbing caveats which deal with the traffic of the blog as if to suggest that this is the primary decision factor for an advertiser. He seems to need a refresher course in niche advertising.
Though I don't regularly get involved in pissing matches or blogging scrums, I've said a lot (at my blog) more about this issue because I do care about advertising and advertisers: http://www.makeyougohmm.com/pivotblg/entry.php?id=1119
It makes me go more than hmm, I tell ya.
Permalink to Comment