The Recession Isn't What's Wrong With Blogging

I read this post yesterday and feel like I'm living in some kind of parallel universe since them. There are scads of comments but not one person seems to be concerned with the following passage:

"I still remember that in 2008, I got a really incredible contract via my ad service company (I have a company that takes care of selling ads on my blog) with a large pharmaceutical company to write six posts for them to try educating readers on the benefits of their product. The deal was to net me $8,000 for those six articles and the only thing I had to do was to get the copy reviewed by the pharmaceutical company to ensure that I wasn’t using any medical words in the wrong way."

Am I the only one who finds this totally alarming? How can people argue the FTC shouldn't be regulating bloggers when there are pharmaceutical companies out there paying bloggers $8,000 to write about medical products?

Then, I was curious about what kind of disclosing she's doing, so I checked out the disclaimer page on her blog. It includes this statement:

"Do you get paid to talk about the products that are featured on the site? That would be great, but we don’t. We do our research and find the latest and the greatest products dealing with aging well and we share them with you."

I'm confused: I thought the whole point of her post was to complain that it's getting harder to get paid review gigs. Not to point fingers or anything, but wouldn't that then make this statement totally untrue?

Reverse Disclosure?

If you read this blog you know I'm big on transparency and disclosure--both because it's important to me and also because it's about to become very important to all bloggers when the FTC releases its revised guidelines later this summer.

Last night on Twitter I noticed a conversation between Danny Brown and Chris Brogan about disclosure, then today saw Danny had a good post up "Can You Have Too Much Disclosure?"

It got me thinking about something I've wondered about before: should bloggers have to worry about what I guess you'd call "reverse disclosure"--e.g. when raving about a product or company that they just happen to like should they say "my only incentive for writing this is my genuine enthusiasm for this product/company/service"? It sounds sort of stupid and tiresome but, what with the new regulations coming from the FTC, will it soon be necessary to reverse disclose to avoid being accused of not disclosing?

I find myself thinking about the concept of reverse disclosure a decent amount lately--maybe because I've become more attuned to the concept of blogging for compensation? Before I started reading so much about the whole disclosure thing I never really gave it much thought--call me stupid but I guess I never realized how many people out there were getting free stuff or being paid to post about products or companies.

I know the handful of times I've been given something free to blog about I've been so impressed with myself that I made darn sure to mention that I'd gotten the stuff for free. The fact that I'd gotten the stuff for free was, in fact, basically the gist of both posts. And in both cases, I wasn't exactly raving about the products; certainly nobody would ever accuse me of writing falsely positive posts. In fact, I'm quite sure that if I were to go solicit products to review, companies would probably steer clear of me, given my reputation for telling it like I see it and not sugar coating things.

The thing is, though, that just as I'm fine with being strongly negative about things if I feel it's warranted, I'm also very passionate about things I love. Especially on my other blog, I'm very prone to raving about how much I love certain books, websites, people and products. (Fair warning: I'm also very prone to using the "F" word, so consider yourself forewarned.) Again, nobody would probably accuse me of raving about a product and not disclosing some conflict of interest, mostly because I'm the most TMI person in the world and usually come right out with the reverse disclosure.

But what about people like Chris Brogan or Penelope Trunk, who companies are willing to pay big bucks to have them mention products or services? (I gasped out loud when I read Penelope Trunk's post about how she used to get paid $5,000 a MONTH to blog about Payscale.) Once the FTC starts peering over bloggers' shoulders a lot more, will people like that need to put reverse disclosures in EVERY post in which they rave about something they weren't somehow compensated for? As much as I'm all for disclosure, I have to say it might get annoying...but will it be a necessary evil?

Why "Sponsored Posts" and "Authenticity" Don't Mix

Here's the thing about sponsored posts: they are NOT authentic. Marketers think that they've discovered the way to customers' hearts and wallets through what Chris Brogan calls the "Everyman." That is, instead of paying actors and copywriters and buying TV spots or print ads, all you have to do is put your product in the hands of Joe or Joanne Regular and let them start the magic word-of-mouth train by blogging/vlogging/tweeting about it. SO much nicer and more genuine than real advertising, right? I mean, which do you trust more--a paid advertisement or a bunch of real people telling you their honest opinions about a product they've already used?

Well, in theory the latter; but only until you start poking around in their collective psyches--or, in this case, blogs. For instance, in a mommy blogger community I recently joined--specifically because I'm curious about this kind of thing--there was a discussion thread "Would you post a poor product review?" Out of 24 responses, only 9 said yes, and of those only 4 were absolute yesses. The rest hemmed and hawed, saying that they don't like to be negative or hurt anyone's feelings or make anyone look bad. One said she had once posted a bad review and the company who supplied the product contacted her and told her to take it down--so she did. The consensus of the thread was pretty much that if you discover you have something negative to say about a product, you should contact the company and see if they still want you to post the review.

Geez, talk about a sure thing. And don't think companies don't know it. They know that people love to get stuff for free--and the bigger/better the thing, the more people want it. And the thing is, they also know that for every person out there with scruples (say the 4 out of the 24 I mention above), there are 20 more who have none.

Not to go back to my blogging/sex analogy, but seriously...say you're a guy looking for sex and willing to pay for it. Would you want a prostitute who makes you feel like a king and fakes it artfully or one who's "authentic" and yawns through the whole thing? If the cost is the same why wouldn't you go for the one who treats you the way you want to be treated? Same for marketers wanting bloggers to generate buzz about their products: if there are millions out there who come right out and say I will not post a negative review because that's not the kind of person I am--of course you're going to send your stuff to those people and not to the ones who say right off the bat that they are 100% honest.