Bloggers are nothing more than writers without editors, publishers, and media distribution channels in their way. In other words, combine the beauty of the human mind with the power of the Internet and you have the ultimate launch pad for the written word. No one has questioned this aspect; what has come into question is whether the blogosphere should allow commercial influence.

What is Commercial Blogging?

When an individual or company provides a content topic to a blogger with facts and direction (including hyperlinks to pages they select) and a blogger writes a post about this for commercial compensation, you have Commercial Blogging.

Is Commercialism In The Blogosphere Bad?

I am a firm believer in responsible and ethical writing. Combine facts with experienced based opinion and you get good writing. Thus, paying someone to publish facts or publish their experience based opinion is not a bad thing. In the end, the readers will let their opinion be known. If a blogger writes reviews and makes unsubstantiated statements, their reader base will figure it out which in the long term will impact their effectiveness.

With this said, I think paying a blogger to use their writing talents to convey facts or express an opinion is a great thing. It allows more facts and opinions to be surfaced than if we relied on the traditional media world (newspapers, magazines, radio, and television) as there tends to be too many gates in the world of traditional media these days.

You Have To Have Power to Be Heard

When the Internet first came on the consumer scene in the late 80’s, my first thought was that this was not something the framers of The Constitution ever saw coming. Free speech is granted to us via the 1st Amendment; however, to be heard you have to have distribution which generally meant money, power, or both. With Internet, all of that went out the door! Since search engines and social media have taken off; however, things have changed. In today’s Internet world you either have to have subscribers, page rank, or both. So the world has come full swing in that if you don’t have the power and you want to get the word out, you’re likely going to have to pay someone to get you there. Instead of hiring a publicist to talk to their journalist contacts, however, these days you can go direct–to the bloggers that is!

What’s a Bad Scenario?

It’s the same in the blogging world as it is in traditional media. If a company pays an athlete to say they love their product and use it on a regular bases, this, in my opinion, is wrong. The same applies to the blogging world. If a company pays a blogger to say they have used something when they haven’t, it is simply a bad strategy (both on behalf of the advertiser as well as the blogger). In the end, both of their reputations are at stake. However, to express experience based opinion or state facts, then you have a different story. For example, if a blogger states the fact that a pair of hockey skates only weighs X number of onces and this is the lightest skate available for purchase, there is a lot of good to come out of that post as a manufacturer has another avenue for getting facts to the Internet. Readers of the blog where this was posted (e.g. a Hockey Blog), will learn something new or become aware of a new product. Or if the blogger states that “light is generally a good thing in sports and there is no reason to believe that the same doesn’t apply to a new line of hockey skates”, once again, logic and opinion aren’t a bad thing. It’s a lot better than the Pay Per Click advertising that could be considered to be polluting the Internet with vanity URLs and misleading landing pages!

The Advertiser Has The Burden

In the end, I think advertisers carry the burden. Today, if you see a bad commercial (not believable, to pushy, or just distasteful) views change the channel and think poorly of the advertiser. The same applies to the blogosphere. I think the good advertisers will use commercial bloggers as a platform for communicating facts and getting different twists on their story via the experience based opinions of commercial authors.

Derick