Stowe Boyd takes another swing at our “Pay Bloggers to Blog” program
I won’t repost the whole thing here but take a look at what Stowe Boyd has to say - now.
He reacts to what Robin Good - one of our bloggers - was saying with:
That aspect of the Marqui deal is what unnerves me about it. A blogger (notwithstanding the disclosure of the relationship) writes a sentence about Marqui, or other subsidized products, right in the flow of his/her opining about technology, or communication, or whatever, and gets compensated for each click that leads to a sale. This is basically turning blogs into nothing more than those aggregated websites slapped together by affiliate marketing folks. No offense; they may serve a purpose, and people may find them useful to search for various products, but they are not serving the same purpose as blogs. And candidly I believe that they are less worthy of attention.
So, in the final analysis, the Marqui experiment is not necessarily evil, and I don’t think it threatens to revolutionize social media. Its just another proof that companies are willing to pay for clicks or eyeballs, and if some group of people decide to use their blogs as affiliate marketing websites, then we will all have to learn how to differentiate those from other, unaffiliated blogs.
So I’m glad to hear we’re not evil or bad or anything, just plain old capitalists in a money driven world.
The only clarification I’d make on Stowe’s excellent rant - is that we’re not looking for clicks as much as qualified sales and developer leads.
As I said before, I’d much rather hire human beings to think for us - then put graphics on a page or even my name to sponsor a page. That seems so ‘passive’ to me.
I like the idea of getting out there - human to human - spread the word, reap the rewards. A perfect balance of meaning and results.
Richard MacManus is stoked, so if the head lemur and others you’ll be hearing from. This program gives them to the opportunity of proving Stowe and Jason Calacanis wrong.
If integrity is the issue, then let’s decide the success or failure of this program on just that.
Marqui’s integrity.
My integrity and our blogger’s integrity - too.