What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time?
December 13, 2008
Today, Twitter and parts of the blogosphere are all abuzz with the debate over whether “sponsored” contests & posts are genuine or whether they damage the credibility of the blogger.
This seems to have started when Jeremiah Owyang [@jowyang] a Senior Analyst at Forrester Research tweeted: “Kmart paid Shoemoney $500 resulting in buzz from paid blog post 300+ comments http://snipurl.com/7yi5w “Buying” social media is effective”
From there, the discussion moved to the fact that Chris Brogan [@chrisbrogan] had also been involved in the project and had posted his Kmart contest over at Dadomatic. Then the twitterverse exploded and the blog posts started.
Apparently, when one of the most trusted guys in Social Media is involved, it becomes a big deal if you think that money might be involved in the equation.
Barbara Gibson from ABC wrote an interesting post here that Chris replied to in the comments. Barbara’s post starts from the viewpoint that a blogger taking money is selling his or her integrity. So her analysis from that starting point is inevitable.
Here’s the thing: You can’t sell your integrity. I’ve worked with many people of high integrity. I say “worked with” because they were getting paid for what they did. Integrity isn’t dependent on a vow of poverty. What it really means is that your position can’t be bought. That no amount of money is going to get you to do something that goes against your values, morals and beliefs.
So, with so many weighing in on this, why I am? Because I’m anticipating the next phase of this discussion.
If you take a look at the last post here, you’ll notice it’s a Walmart & Nickelodeon contest for a $500 Walmart gift card. All of the ElevenMoms have a similar contest up. It’s really not all that different than the K-mart contest is it? They have 5 bloggers posting contests for $500 K-mart cards, we have 20-some bloggers posting contests for $500 Walmart cards.
What’s the difference? Well, it does come down to that ’sponsored’ word. The Izea bloggers received a $500 gift card themselves. We did not. The Izea bloggers went to K-mart, bought things using those cards, blogged about it and then gave the chance to do the same to one of their readers. I didn’t go shopping at Walmart with a $500 gift card, blog about it, and then do the give away – I just posted the opportunity for one of my readers to win.
But in both cases, there’s a lot of work being done. There’s the initial post. There’s sorting thru the hundreds of entries to make sure that invalid ones are thrown out, that there’s no duplicates, that people are following the rules. Then having to choose the winner, get their information, get the card out to them. All this administrative work? I’m doing out of the goodness of my heart so one of my readers will win something cool. If the contest were being held on the companies’ sites? They’d have paid people doing it. I don’t have a staff here, so it’s just me and my time and effort.
Now let’s take the money out of the equation. Blogger X has a company send him/her 2 toasters – one to keep, one to give away to a reader. Or maybe it’s not toasters – maybe it’s a Wii, or an iPhone, or a MacBook Pro, or a fleece jacket (all promotions I’ve actually seen) – and the blogger says “wow! I just got to play with this new item… I love it, so here’s a chance to win it.”
That situation I just described happens every day on hundreds of blogs. I’ve never heard anyone saying “OMG!! I totally don’t trust Blogger X’s opinions of electronics anymore because he had a contest giving away a laptop!”
But now that we’ve added money into the equation there’s a brouhaha.
So let’s add a new dimension to this, shall we? Am I “more trustworthy” because I put in all that work for free? Or are the Izea bloggers “less trustworthy” because they saw their time and effort as valuable and believed they should be compensated for it?
My answer is a resounding NO.
Let’s get down to brass tacks here, shall we? I participate in the Walmart ElevenMoms program because I actually believe in what we’re doing. I shop at Walmart *gasp* regularly. I did before I got involved in the program. I actually like saving money and getting good deals. I love the thought of some reader of mine having an extra $500 to help out with the holidays this year. I know that will go a really long way at Walmart.
Since I’ve gotten involved in the program, I’ve been accused of ‘getting paid as a Walmart shill‘ – and when I revealed that I was not paid accused of ‘setting MommyBloggers everywhere back by setting a poor example and letting companies think they can get free work out of us.‘ I’ve read that I must be getting ’secret kickbacks’ and that there’s ‘no way’ I ever shopped at Walmart. I’ve been called a lot of names. It’s been interesting, to say the least.
But I just keep doing what I’m doing. Because if I didn’t believe in the program, I wouldn’t do it.
If K-mart had come to me and said “would you like to participate in this contest we’re doing with Izea?” I would’ve said yes. Why? Because I shop at K-mart too. *gasp* And again, I would love the idea of giving one of my readers $500 to help out with the holiday and it would go a long way there.
Would I have said “no! My time is worth nothing! Keep the $500 gift card for me, I’ll do it for free!” Hell no. If offered I would’ve said “thank you for recognizing that my time is worth something – please be aware that if you want me to actually review the store in the post, rather than just running a contest for a gift card, I will be giving my honest opinions in the review – positive & negative – and I will be making sure that my readers understand that this is a sponsored post.”
Do I think that the Izea bloggers did exactly that? Yes. I know most of those bloggers. I trust their integrity. They’re not going to be taking money from or running a contest for a company that they don’t believe will benefit their readers. If “Pyramid Scams R Us” came calling, not one of them would’ve done it – no matter how much money or ’sponsorship’ was involved.
You can’t buy integrity. You can’t sell integrity. If you have integrity? Money isn’t relevant. If you don’t? Money is the only relevancy.
Look, the only time I have problems with paying bloggers to post something is when it’s deceptive. There are a number of models out there right now that are paying bloggers to post where the payment part is being glossed over. Sites with high profile bloggers who are definitely being compensated but where that part is as hidden as it can be. If you’re going to get all feisty about paying bloggers? Let’s point the spotlight at people who aren’t the ones saying “SPONSORED POST” all over it.
Now – tell me why I’m wrong.
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