money, money, money

Evil Genius Chronicles - PayPerPost and the Race to the Bottom

"Is it that an A-lister cashing for a lot of money is fine, while a Z-lister cashing in for nickels and dimes is no good? How about an A-lister selling a network of revenue producing blogs to AOL? I don’t see how you can see these as that different. How is it reasonable for Jason Calcanis to be on the high horse on this subject? I think a lot of people could claim that he polluted the blogosphere a long time ago with profit motive driven blogs staffed by paid bloggers rather than those writing purely out of their passions. Now that he’s cashed the check, he wants to keep the blogosphere pure. Where was he with that argument before he (literally) sold out? Why is one form of pandering horrible and another perfectly acceptable? It seems hypocritical to me."

i was going to simply leave a comment on dave's post, but then as i was writing it i realized that i had more of a post than a comment to contribute - so switched to a trackback instead...

this argument has felt to religious to me from the start, and has been going on for awhile w/ me successfully ignoring it - but since friends like dave and pete are involved, and i know jason, i decided to jump in...

when i think of what blogging means to me, i think of freedom of expression, transparency and communication always approached by me w/ an eye towards the agnostic part of the "excercise" - but that's just me, others of course love the extremes of blogging and sure i take sides from time to time, but rarely do i go to the extreme religious right or left of any debate...

its a "life is just to short" decision on my part...

however, if someone wants to be creative and work for an ad or pr agency's online efforts, sit in a basement and post for nickels on things they care little about or cut out the middleman and do what pete is doing (i've supported pete's efforts from day one), so be it, why should others care - again if anyone wants to get paid to post on something they could care less about except that it pays - so be it...

i just won't be reading those posts - at the end of the day we can all chose who we subscribe to and read - the ones that make no sense to us don't get priority in our stack and end up ignored and irrelevant "to us"...

as for categorizing paid bloggers: my pov has always been open minded i hope - anyone who blogs for a company or organization, has sponsorship, advertising or even affiliate links (amazon) could be considered a paid blogger, more power to them & so be it, but again why should we really care?

from day one the web has been a petri dish, some things are perceived to succeed, readily make sense to others and appear to grow - the ones that don't either stay small and valid as such or ultimately die, so be it - life goes on...

now when it comes to hypocrisy and elitism - i definitely can't stand anyone w/ those tendencies but again its so much easier just to ignore them than to converse w/ them, at some point they'll get bored and go pester someone else or switch to the next cause celeb...

Comments

[Jason]

The concept of an A-list in blogging is really silly frankly. There isn't an A-list, everyone is on a level playing field and you rise and fall with your posts. If you want to become what some folks consider an A-list blogger you can do it in 30-60 days if you:

a) go to TechMeme and write an intelligent post about the top story of the day every day.

b) go to 2-3 blogger events and introduce yourself to folks

c) write an intelligent comment on 5-10 blogs a day.

That's it... now you're "A-list"

Compare that to MSM where you might wait in line 5-20 years to get a gig at the NYT, WSJ, etc... and even when you do you still have to answer to all kinds of people.

The blogosphere is the most level playing field in the history of media. To say that the PayPerPost issue is about A-list vs. "nobodies" is a joke. Everyone is someone in the blogosphere... everyone get a voice. It's up to you how you use that voice: for covert marketing or for authentic discourse.

I'm fighting against covert marketing. No one likes to deceived--do you?

[mike dunn]

concur on the a-list being irrelevant jason - but i could care less regarding covert or overt marketiods, i'm just not paying attention to those sort of sites/posts in a way that effects my decisions...

but i'm a technologist - sensing and avoiding marketing is in my dna ;)