I’m going to make this one very simple, and will start with comparison. When people pay a psychic reader to tell their future they usually have mixed feelings: on one hand, they want to know the truth, on the other hand they want to hear only the positive truth.
When brands pay bloggers to write reviews for their products they hope to hear the same positive truth. When a blogger doesn’t like the product he got paid to review he/she has two choices:
1. To write a positive review and lie to the readers.
2. To write a negative review and disappoint the sponsor.
You might argue and say brands are willing to take the risk of a negative review when they approach bloggers. I would argue that no one would want pay a blogger to critique their product in front of thousands of loyal readers. If brands wanted to get a honest critique for their product they would pay people for anonymous surveys and private focus groups, never in public on a popular blog.
Paid reviews seem to be the most common shortcut in online marketing today, and according to many will only grow in the current economic environment. In my future posts, I will share my point of view on how brands could work with bloggers in a way that will not compromise ethics as well as allow bloggers to make revenue from these relationships (sponsored coverage, events, contests, giveaways, advertorials, and more). Meanwhile, here is the latest discussion from Forrester Research Senior Analyst Jeremiah Owyang on How To Make Sponsored Conversations Work.
Yuli – Paying bloggers is wrong. It’s not an honest way to market any product.
I contributed our results to Jerimiah’s results for a sponsored conversation that our brand 1928.com had. We didn’t pay for that review or placement. We offered a few pieces of our costume jewelry as a giveaway to the website’s subscribers. The blog owner came up with the format of how entrants would win, in this case – that had to share their favorite product. We received 457 comments because her readers actually knew the brand and loved winning our jewelry. The website owner said it was her most successful contest ever and has since increased traffic better product giveaways and more advertising revenue, that made it a win win for both parties.
Sponsored Conversations can have a few different meanings, including product giveaways. Sometimes they directly correlate to the product (providing an unscientific form of market research) and sometimes the product is offered as the prize to contributed the most towards commenting and dialogue in a forum. Web owners should always reward Alpha users for continued participation and support.
Thanks for your comment, Macala! you are absolutely right, there is a great difference between paid reviews and sponsored conversations such as the contests you run on a blog. I edited my post to make my point clear. In this post I wanted to talk strictly about paid reviews (pay-per-post style) and why those will never work.
Yuli, great points! I completely agree about paid reviews. If you want someone to review your product, you shouldn’t have to provide monetary incentive…if you do, it’s probably a good sign they aren’t interested. Besides, bloggers who accept payment to review a product should also put up some red flags. Transparency is so important for maintaining credibility with your readers, and since it takes time to build up an audience, a lot of bloggers aren’t willing to sacrifice it to make a few quick bucks.
I’m okay with “sponsored posts” as long as they are labeled properly, but don’t feature them on my site.
I think it’s all in the approach the brand takes. We did it with dannonkitchen.com and it was v. successful because it had was organic and natural. The bloggers were submitting recipes and polls on a weekly basis and it met the brands objective of building affinity.
I am working on similar initiative now for another client. If we can find a blogger who is willing to represent the brand who believes in the brands ideals what is wrong with that? The credibility factor is higher for a brand when their message is funneled through consumers to their peers.
As for pay per blog posts, I think there is some hypocrisy here. How many people are swayed by swag? As a blogger you are supposed to be impartial but if a PR company sends you free stuff are you telling me that you are going to be less harsh about the product if it doesn’t work? Yes, would be the answer you would hope for. However, I think the reality is that human nature causes people to swayed in their “impartial judgment of products”.
That’s my two cents anyway…
hey Alexis, I think we should differentiate between 2 things here: brands inviting bloggers to share recipes on the brand website can’t be compared to a paid review on the blogger’s site, which is the main subject of my post.
I also believe in paid guest blogging on brand’s website, if the blogger fits the niche, again this is very different from paying a blogger for a product review on their own blog.
About the free stuff – it’s true that the line is pretty gray here. I think it’s fine when bloggers clearly state that they receive new products to test, but never guarantee a review. It works for beauty products, because they can never be returned after review. The problem begins when a company gives you a laptop or expensive camera as a gift in return for product review on your blog. In this case it’s not very different from receiving a payment. I think bloggers should be treated just as other press. PR firms often send new products for press review/test and these are usually returned later, in expense of the PR firm (again, unless it’s something that can’t be returned once opened).
i could talk forever on this subject…i disagree with blatantly paying bloggers to write about products. but i do NOT believe that it is wrong for a blogger to accept a product at no charge to review. yes, i do this, and have done this for all 4.5 years i’ve been writing. not all of my reviews are items i’ve received from a designer, most are my personal purchases. designers who send product to review get exposure all over the place, and it takes time & energy to put together a review, i shouldn’t be compensated for that? i never guarantee a positive review & always give honest opinions about the product – and for me, i cannot do that unless i use it for some time first. i also do more than just review items, they’re featured in multiple outfit pictures…for years.
i’m also randomly sent stuff (that i didn’t ask for) by pr companies/designers that i never write about because it’s not my style, or i would never choose to spend my own money on it. i am not swayed at all by “free stuff” – but i can understand how some people would be.
i think it all depends on the blogger – i’ve never been one to only promote advertisers, or affiliates (like MANY other fashion/shopping sites do); my mission when i started was to provide ALL the information available, and that has kept me around this long. that, and tremendous visitor loyalty & trust.
there are always going to be unethical people in any industry. that does not mean we should condemn ANYONE who takes money or product in exchange for a review in our industry as unethical or dishonest. taking money/product for providing a service & having editorial integrity are NOT mutually exclusive.
Thanks for your feedback Grechen! I’m always curious about what other bloggers think on the subject and what’s their policies, especially someone like yourself who’s been in the space for so long.
I personally find it difficult to keep my objectivity/credibility/trust when I’m gifted free products. I’m not sure if the product value makes a difference (lip gloss vs. expensive gadget) or it’s the concept itself that makes me uncomfortable.
Again, in this post I wanted to focus specifically on paid reviews, not necessarily on the freebies. But it’s definitely an important discussion we should have as bloggers. I would love to hear more opinions and experiences, positive or negative.
Yuli I agree that paying a blogger to review your product could be a bad spot for both the blogger and the product company. In the product review process I would think that a blogger is looking for a “winner product” just as much as the product company is looking for a “winner review”. But like you and your readers point out, what if the blogger doesn’t really like it and doesn’t feel comfortable recommending it to their readers? I’m sure money and kickbacks complicate things in this situation as they often do.
I assume it’s common practice or you wouldn’t be writing about it, but do bloggers typically have a pay-to-review or pay-to-post policy? Is that just because of the mass amounts of inbound requests received or is it more of an attempted revenue model rather than a filter?
I’m curious what benefit a blogger would have in negatively reviewing a product (to their readers) vs. not reviewing it at all and just providing some critique directly to the product company? In the case of a paid review I assume that the blogger feels obligated to post even though it’s bad? Just curious.
Thanks for this type of post, helps us out greatly.
JW – pay-per-post is definitely a common practice in the blogosphere – otherwise there won’t be a company called http://PayPerPost.com
I’m not the first to question their model, but I wanted to post my point of view on the subject and why I think it’s wrong for both sides.
I’m not sure about the “benefits” of posting either positive or negative review in case of the paid post, since it will create confusion either way – both for the blogger and the reader. In addition, this is where traditional PR practice being challenged as well. Why would you take the traditional PR route to pitch your product to bloggers if you can just pay the blogger directly and guarantee a review on their site?
Blogs are usually known for their personal authentic voice and any marketer who is trying to influence this voice with cash should raise a red flag. With that said there are plenty of other (ethical) ways to spend cash on promotions via blogs without taking this questionable route.