Why sponsored posts can be great posts

There is a lot of controversy surrounding sponsored posts in the blogging community.  It’s one of those topics that seems to have no gray areas.  you are either for aid posts or against them.  No middle ground. No holds-barred. No quarter given.

The Pros:

The pro’s are pretty simple.  Paid posts make a blogger money.  They pay well for the word count, are simple to produce and can produce a very viable portion of an income, especially if the blogger producing them runs a blog with a decent Google PageRank or a large audience.

The cons:

For those on the other side of the issue, the cons are that paid posts are nothing more than infomercials.  They pollute the world of blogging with posts that would otherwise not be written, are poorly written or are simply false advertising for the sake of a buck.  They argue that sponsored posts somehow mar the purity of the blogging community, destroying trust between blogger and reader on a large scale.

Google even jumped on the bandwagon, destroying the PageRank of thousands of blogs because it feels that anyone giving link juice to another site for a fee devalues their internal algorithms and falsely promotes the value of the paying site. (My opinion of this is the topic for an entirely different post.)

The reality:

The reality of the matter is this:  If a blogger accepts paid posts that have little or nothing to do with the subject matter of his or her blog, sponsored posts are obviously going to fall flat with that blogs readership.  These posts feel rushed, out of place and worse, forced, because the author probably doesn’t have a high degree of passion for the topic at hand.  It is this variety of sponsored posts that keeps the argument against all sponsored posts raging.

On the other side of the coin however, if a blogger accepts a sponsored post that directly relates to the subject matter of his or her blog on a topic that they know well and have the same level of passion for as the other posts that they write, a sponsored post can not only be quality content, but it can be golden.

As an example:  In my other life as a foodie and amateur gourmet I write a blog that centers on food, recipes and cooking.  By default there are other aspects involved.  food is about passion and memories as much as it is about ingredients and methods.  There’s something about it that touches lives, creates moments in our lives and sparks a bit of nostalgia.

I was offered the opportunity to write a post (for a fee) about a product that is almost universally known in the US.  the product is a convenience food that most of you would probably recognize on site and, love it or hate it, you’ll have memories of it from your youth. (Or from last night, depending on who you are.)

I took the offer and wrote the post based on my experiences and my memories.  I fully disclosed that the post was in-fact bought and paid for.  All links are properly nofollowed, and there’s a glaring badge at the end of the post declaring to the world that I’m a capitalist and had sold out the purity of my writing for a dollar. (Well, a bunch of dollars.)

Not only did my readership not care… It turned out to be one of my more popular posts of the month.  It generated comments, discussions and my readers left their memories of the product for others to share.  the post was a great addition to my blog on a topic I would not have thought to write on my own.  It ads value for my readers and has given them something to discuss, which is what engagement is all about, isn’t it?

So before you make a hasty decision as to whether there is value in sponsored posts, you have to consider this:

If the author chose the post because he or she is passionate about the topic, is an expert on the subject or has something of value to share in the process, is it really a bad thing that they got paid for the post?  does it make it any worse than someone who gets paid to ghostwrite the posts on another blog or to hire their services to write web content?

I don’t think it does… But that’s my opinion.  What’s yours?  Are sponsored posts evil?  should Izea and all the other companies paying for posts destroying the Interwebs as we speak?  Leave a comment and let us know.  We’d love to hear what you think.

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