Disclosure

Today I am disclosing that I sometimes do not disclose my sponsored posts. You see, some advertisers do not like this. If I had my way, I would write in bold at the top of the post. This is a sponsored post. Unfortunately, most advertisers request that you do not disclose that the post you have written for them is a sponsored post. No hard advertising. No no. That defeats the purpose of blog advertising.

A good blog ad must blend seemlessly into your blog. That is why some advertisers choose their blog hosts carefully to make sure that your subject matter fits with theirs. (other than your blog’s Google Page Rank of course. The higher your rank, the more worthwhile your links will be to the advertiser because when a site with a good Google Page Rank links to you, it will increase your site rank as well. Dotcoms as opposed to free blogging domains is more valuable as well.) I said some because some advertisers, like the gambling and adult sites do not care. Speaking of which, I do not accept adult sites ads and gambling ads on my site even though they pay better. I do however accept loan sites and alcholic drinks sites. (only once so far but it was not a sponsored post but rather a sidebar ad). I have a site wide disclosure policy somewhere on my homepage but who reads those things?

When I first started writing sponsored posts, blog advertising was at the time catching on like fire. Some who did not write ads, wrote about how some bloggers had sold out on their blogs for $$$$. People will lose trust in you, they say. They did not mince their words. They said rather unkind things. Eventually many of those who said that all started writing one by one. 😉

I don’t think there is anything wrong about writing sponsored posts. Put arrogantly, one may say, It is my blog, I can do whatever I like with it. (That has some truth actually.)However, in taking care of your own integrity and the requirements of the advertiser when you write posts that you are not allowed to put a disclaimer on, it is better to write something that is close to your heart, something that you would write anyway, and then put in the required links at appropriate places. The advertisers like this too. In fact some of them prefer this to hard advertising.

On your part, in this manner, you also don’t endorse any product or service that you have never used. However, you can still write positively about it. Honesty is very important. That means, when writing a sponsored post, I very seldom write reviews unless it is for something that I have used before and which I know very well. To me product reviews are very much harder to write and require much more thought and work. You have to be very detailed about it, posts pictures, give pros and cons while keeping it impartial. So I generally don’t write reviews. I just write as I normally would write.

Right, enough said. Just wanted to get this out of the way so that my newer readers know that when you see a post that looks a bit out of place, something that perhaps I would seldom write about for example about overseas holidays or gold coins or taking payday loans with several links in it, then it is probably an ad. Whether you want to read on or otherwise is up to you.