Community Generated Advertising

I think this "internet" is here to stay.

Sure, there was doubt for a few years that it might go the way of Citizen's Band Radio and the party line, but few would argue that the world is going to become unmeshed from the data tubes that now weave through every facet of life.

In fact, I'm betting you're on the internet right now.

Furthermore (and perhaps more controversially), I think there's still money to be made on the internet.

Yeah, I missed out on the original wave of everything on the internet turning to gold. And the second wave too. I've comforted myself with the fact that I'll never have to worry about the value of my stock options.

No, the road to squeezing nickels and dimes out of the internet these days is through hard work and creative output. And I'm betting there's a million ways to do it. Well at least 365. In 2008 I'm adding a new blog to the Pikamac infotainment network dealing with squeezing these nickels: trying out the myriad ways of making money with one's computer and writing about it in the Pikamac trademark humorous and infotaining fashion.

As a sneak preview (since I haven't finished the design work for the new blog) I'd like to talk about a company called PayPerPost today. PayPerPost bills itself as a "marketplace for Consumer Generated Advertising". What this means without the buzz-speak is that they pay bloggers to write about stuff. Not stuff like the nature of reality or what David Leisure is up to, but actual stuff. Products and services.

Plenty of bloggers have criticized PPP's business model is getting bloggers to "shill" for their clients, but the idea of user-generated advertising is an interesting one. Since a particular advertiser is sometimes most interested in improving their Google PageRank, in many cases the comments a blogger is generating need not be positive. No such thing as bad publicity.

On some level I'm bothered by advertising on a personal blog, even though I've got the ubiquitous GoogleAds and such in the margins of this one somewhere. They're tasteful. Is generating content to order tasteful? PPP has very stringent disclosure policies which seem to dodge most ethical issues with "shilling". And the rates aren't bad either: not enough to quit one's day job, but enough that an occasional post can cover webhosting costs.

But there's where the fine line comes in: presumably if a blogger posts nothing but paid-for content I imagine their readership is going to sink like a stone. In that sense, outfits like PayForPost could be self-regulating (since many opportunities require a high Google PageRank). The company, perhaps proactively, is very concerned with blog ethics.

I'm getting Paypaled twenty bucks for writing this post. Is it "selling out" more than adding the GoogleAds (which I've yet to see a thin dime from)? There's a shiny disclosure bar at the bottom. And I promise not to make a habit of writing content to order. This one's for science (and the aforementioned $20).