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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40 Responses to “What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time?”
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I so agree with you. Integrity comes in when a Pyramids-R-Us comes onto the scene and the blogger says no way. Wonderful Article.
You’re not wrong. You’re right on the money. This manufactured idiocy over a “top blogger” writing an Izea post is nonsense, particularly when it was fully disclosed and he bought stuff for charity.
I wrote for PayperPost and would have written for Izea, but the BlogHer ads carried restrictions that were too difficult to comply with. I always disclosed, I always gave my best writing, and I was always honest. I am proud of those posts — I gave the advertisers every penny they paid for them.
Because I wrote for them, I was able to donate $150 to the Susan Komen Foundation, give $150 to a friend who desperately needed a new computer, and pay for my domain hosting and registration.
The flak isn’t really about Chris Brogan. It’s about those who have a need to constantly take aim at Ted Murphy and what he’s doing. After all, he’s disruptive. If they’d figured it out first it would be the next shiny thing.
You go girl! Excellent posts! If our readers did not trust us to give an honest opinion they wouldn’t be reading right? Honestly? I think their is alot of jealousy going around and that is bring out the worst in people. I have yet to do a paid post but if I could have gotten that $500 Kmart GC you bet your britches I would have taken. My time is valuable!
The problem I have with sponsored posts is that there are a lot of blogs out their whose quality suffers a lot, since the reviews/posts they write are far from objective, plus some tend to have a sponsored article every other post.
They promote themselves as ‘personal blogs’, but in the end they’re just marketing tools (not the blogs, but the people themselves). Now of course when I figure out that some blog I’m visiting is full of spam and the author has no integrity, I will stop visiting… The problem I have with these blogs though is that they detract value of the entire blogosphere.
In the case of this Walmart stunt and the aforementioned people, they seem to be people of integrity and I’m sure they can be professional and objective about the whole thing. In their case I don’t see them as detracting value of the blogosphere.
I have to say that when I saw Chris Brogan’s post I was like: “What? No way!” But, then, I thought, well, why the heck not? He disclosed everything is red, flashing lights, so to speak. I did find it odd, though, especially coming from someone of his caliber. After seeing his post, I experimented with a sponsored post on my blog and after I run the last one next week, I won’t be doing it again.
I think sponsored posts get into sticky territory no matter how transparent a blogger is. I go back and forth on this issue a lot myself. I’d rather stick to the banner ad model and leave sponsored posts alone. Then again, I may change my mind tomorrow. It is an interesting debate, though.
Thanks for making the distinction between blogging with integrity or blogging for payola.
If you do continue to do things with transparency, it will help smooth things out in the long run. Perhaps you will encounter a kerfuffle here and there, but that’s media for you.
In the meantime, there are plenty of shady practices out there that are deserving of scrutiny, and others that will probably live or die as more bloggers jump on the bandwagon and we collectively figure all of this stuff out.
I hope more people find it within themselves to be pragmatic and not cling to some dogmatic notion of what blogging has been and always shall be about.
talk about smart social media marketing, I think what K-mart and Wal-mart did was very very very SMART. Once these social media superstars help promote their brand, it has created such a buzz that advertises only dream of. Kudos to them.
>>Look, the only time I have problems with paying bloggers to post something is when it’s deceptive.
AGREED!
If a blogger is transparent about his or her sponsorships or the gifts he or she receives, than who cares? The losing bloggers are the ones who pretend to their readership that they are unbiased yet they silently shill goods based on money they have silently received.
I’m not going to pretend, however, that money doesn’t help rosy up an already good opinion or smooth a critique. Again, as long as a blogger tells me that they received compensation from the company being reviewed, It doesn’t really matter. They’ve educated me on all I need to know.
You are so right L! These people getting upset about it, are really upset about people who have no integrity in the blogosphere, not sponsored posts in and of themselves.
The funny thing is that this has been going on in the mommysphere forever. We read those blogs that we like the writing and connect with the blogger, and don’t mind those sponsored posts if the blogger is authentic and transparent. We are looking in on all this and going “what’s the big deal?”
It’s a conundrum some of us would love to have to deal with.
Okay, I am not going to tell you I am wrong, but I am going to say
“WOW!”
because first of all I just read a lot of interesting stuff.
One of the reasons i didn’t enter into your give away is
I don’t shop at wallmart.
So let some one who does make the effort to win..
Right?
I was surprised that you do…but I honestly don’t care where you shop, it’s your right to spend
your money where ever you want.
I didn’t even have a clue that some one gets paid to blog. Although I notice a lot of bloggers who link to their books and shops and stuff,
Thats there choice too!
So
now i am wondering am I a bad guy for giving away a bunch of stuff on my blog?
some of it from people i have never met, whose generosity has compelled them to come forward and say here..for you
A kindness of a stranger…
geez..
That looks a lot like integrity and compassion to me…
shrug.
Girl the world is a crazy place.
okay i just rambled, i hope that made some cents! ( loose change dontcha know)
NOt going to tell you YOU are wrong!
DOH!
I am tired..
I completely agree with you. In the scenerio with K-Mart that you descibe, integrity would have been lost if the company asked for only a positive opinion. If one of the bloggers said that they hated the experience, the company takes that risk. Sponsored blogging asks for an opinion, good or bad. The company could wind up losing.
For the most part, companies are letting us PAY THEM to generate buzz about them. We buy meals, books, movie tickets and CDs and post our opinions, comments and reviews all over the web.
I volunteer to run a large volunteer social media network dedicated to nonprofit and activist endeavors. Not a cent is expected by any of the dedicated bulletin posters and bloggers doing any of the work.
According to those in fierce opposition to you, this would have to be the only model for “integrity” in blogging. That would be ridiculous.
Excellent post! Very well thought out. If you are up front about your situation. go for it!
Thanks for the feedback you guys. I was surprised that anyone would get in a state over that whole situation - but I guess it really is a minority. Either that, or they just haven’t gotten over here yet to tell me why they disagree!
~GM
I’ve never understood that whole money-integrity argument… I mean, even if a blogger DOES accept money (or gifts) to promote a certain item or service, it then effectively becomes ADVERTISING. The advertising industry basically revolves around essentially tricking people into buying stuff — yet integrity seems to be a non-issue for advertising professionals who are paid to promote the same items or services.
Truthfully, I’m not a fan of giveaways on blogs, but that’s more because it generally takes away from the space devoted to real posts that I enjoy reading. (Also, I never win. Which makes me sad.)
But I just don’t get what the problem is with a blogger’s choice to monetize. The comment from Bas up there says something about sponsored posts devaluing the entire blogosphere, but to me the beauty of the blogosphere is its variety and individuality. There’s no set of rules, we’re not journalists. Each blog is different, each blogger can make choices. Sure, you’ll find a blog or two that are deceptive in their presentation, but it’s a small price to pay for the rich environment you find elsewhere.
Am I missing the point?
OK, for sake of argument…and for sake of truth….let’s say i’m a marketer. For 15 years. And let’s just say that even people who are not marketers find it pretty easy to see how muddy the waters get with EVERY single medium a marketer gets their hands on–because they too often take shortcuts (I like value, I don’t like shortcuts).
TV?
Last time I checked DVRs and TiVo were selling like mad because people can now delete commercials. Funny thing, we hate commercials (except for some very well-done ones
Your mailbox?
How many more poor trees need to be thrown into our garbage cans with such bogus direct mail pieces? It’s distasteful all the direct mail junk.
Your phone?
Well, we now have do not call laws. Yup, marketers were so bad they had to enact laws, ha!
Print?
How annoying is it to have to bypass 30 pages of ads just to get to the content in a magazine?
And, now, the blogosphere. How long do you really think it’s gonna take marketing models such as this (and, um, magpie) to hurt this medium?
Answer: not long… if we let it.
Let’s not be mixing content with ads–even when we disclaim the noise is still, well, noise. (And it’s about to get noisier.) The reason there is pay-for-posts is because the co’s can’t get ppl to authentically write about them (my job as marketer is to create products that are worthy of real WOM).
We don’t need more noise (it kills our cred, btw), we need lots of authentic signal. That’s why I followed you when you were anti-magpie, because I found so many authentic voices that way. It was brilliant to run searches of ppl who “hated magpie’s model” becuz I found ppl I could trust. Yippie.
Hey, while I love you to itty-bitty pieces, we were bound to disagree at some point. And I’ll keep promoting and fighting for as authentic a Web as possible. Because there are better ways and I don’t ever want to be that kind of marketer. But I will say this: anyone is more than allowed to monetize however they want to monetize…I fight for that right, too. I just don’t have to read it but others can.
Thanks for letting me voice-in. Sorry to be the dissenting voice…but it comes from a very honest and advancing place. Plus, you asked me to share my thoughts here ;-).
This really doesn’t even raise an eyebrow for me. I think perhaps it’s because advertising has become so all-pervasive in other media - think about it, what’s the last movie or TV show you watched that didn’t have product placements all over? Do they put up disclaimers - heck no! But, like with the blogs we read and the people we follow on Twitter, we have the choice to pay attention or turn it off - to me, it’s that simple, if you don’t like it, stop reading or change the channel.
If a blog has “sponsored content,” and I value that blogger’s opinions, I’ll probably still read their post, although in all honesty, I may jump to the next post quicker than with a non-sponsored post.
@CK
Some absolutely great thoughts there.
I’ll have to think about it. I try to balance my content, actually. There are some reviews earlier in my timeline here that were just products I found at the store and adored.
The question becomes would those product reviews been less valid if the product had been one a friend had prepared for me at her home? What if I had found it because some nice little lady at the grocery store had handed me a ‘free sample’ on a toothpick? How about if the company sent me a free sample via FedEx?
I don’t claim to have the answers - but I get sent a *ton* of unsolicited stuff. I wouldn’t blog about anything that I wasn’t 100% behind. No matter how much money you gave me. I wouldn’t say for $1 million that a product was good in my estimation if it isn’t. I just can’t be bought.
But I do understand the concern - because I really don’t think that’s the rule, but rather an exception.
It bears a lot of thinking about!
But thank you for *being* the voice of dissent! I do respect your opinion and you’ve given me stuff to ponder!
Timeless thoughts couched in crystal prose.
It really comes down to what the role of the blogger really is. If a blogger is supposed to be a journalist, then yes, PPP would be a corruption of their duty.
I just don’t think that’s our role. Blogs are great sources of breaking news, but by and large people put more trust in print journalism than blogging anyway. If it really was considered a problem, you would think someone would have reported on the vast number of blogs selling their integrity for Kmart long before calling out Brogan for the same thing, right?
Hey, I seem to remember Loren Feldman getting $500 from Kmart to shop there and post about it - was there every any flack over that?
@ciaoenrico - It’s the same contest:
http://blog.izea.com/holiday-hoopla-contest-official-rules.html
http://www.dadomatic.com
http://www.1938media.com
http://www.juliaroy.com
http://www.shoemoney.com
http://www.sparkplugging.com/momsational
http://www.shefinds.com
All hosted it. I personally have no issue with how any of them handled it. They all disclosed, they all handled it professionally, and they all did it aboveboard.
If I had to guess about your question? I’d say that Chris made the easiest target because he’s a very nice guy and it made a better ’splash’ as sensation.
Anyone stupid enough to give Loren flack over that deserves exactly what they’d get. He’d chew them up and spit them out.
I think you hit the nail on the head with this point:
“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.”
Why is it OK for us to do product reviews, but not be compensated fairly for running giveaways? I almost never run giveaways if I have not been sent a product to review as well. And when I have, it has been self-initiated because I wanted to do an awesome giveaway for my readers and therefore took on the responsibility to doing the work. But if a company approached me? I now know enough to ask that I be compensated or walk away.
My readers have never questioned my credibility because I am always transparent about what I am doing.
I do, however, think one thing could have been done differently in the KMart/Blogger promo. I think it would have been more transparent if they had been paid $500 via a check or a more neutral gift card like American Express rather than required to shop at KMart with the $500 they received.
In our case for ElevenMoms, as much as I do shop at Walmart for the low prices, I would have preferred to get $500 that wasn’t tied to any one store. Making the bloggers agree to shop at Kmart when if they normally wouldn’t have done so is part of what’s causing the rift, I think. If they had simply been paid $500, the argument then would have been that they were being compensated for the time and effort for running the giveaway.
Of course, Kmart wouldn’t have received the same type of publicity, but they still would have gotten a lot of buzz.
I totally agree with you. I’m all for bloggers getting paid. It takes a lot of time regardless of what you are doing - reviews, giveaways,etc. and I most certainly agree with being compensated for that.
I review hundreds of dollars worth of products per month. I’m not getting paid to do it. I’m just getting a free product and usually it’s not very expensive. If I were working for a big company I’d probably get the product plus be paid . So, whats the big deal?
My only issue is when other people gripe about doing paid posts then end up doing paid posts themselves without disclosure. I don’t care that they are doing it - just be honest!
Furthermore, if blogging/publishing is your only job how are you supposed to get by if you are doing it for free? We all have to make money somehow. Let’s get real and stop hating over a sponsored post.
If you are that upset over it then you obviously have issues.
Excellent post! My favorite line is, “Integrity isn’t dependent on a vow of poverty. ” We make a terrible assumption when we assume that just because money is involved that the blogger will leave values behind. True Integrity in a person won’t be lost when their work is valued with payment.
The truth tends to eventually surface in our increasingly transparent world and it’s to both the sponsor and the endorser’s detriment. The sponsor loses more when someone transparently promotes a product (paid advertisement) but is not an actual consumer or fan (for example, Britney Spears, a photographed Coke-consumer, endorsing Pepsi). The endorser loses more when Xe promotes a product Xe doesn’t actually use/consume and hides the compensation (imagine a well-known blogger and Mac-fan suddenly appearing at conferences with a PC, and later it being revealed that Dell paid for Xer to do so).
If however, someone is a fan/consumer of a product, and ends of profiting from this, good for them!
It’s proving that as information becomes more available, advertisers and marketers will have a more difficult time selling a less-than desirable product.
Wow, I think some people must just be bored. All I know is that I love giveaways and the only part that I think is sad is that you didn’t get a $500 Walmart card yourself. You deserve one!
[...] Posts: (I’ll be updating this) Lucreia Pruitt: What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? (who’s actually one of the unpaid Wal-Mart Mommy Bloggers) Aaron Brazil: [...]
There are so many important things in the world to be concerned about (that most of us are completely ignorant of)–this all seems trivial. People need to step back and get some perspective.
Recommended viewing:
http://www.chrismartenson.com/crashcourse
I agree with you wholeheartedly. Why should we work for free? Getting paid at my regular job never changed my integrity, so why would it in this instance?
Even though I was one of the Kmart bloggers, this very tired and old ‘paid for blogging’ argument really pisses me off.
I’ve turned away somewhere between $25K and $35K worth of advertising and sponsored reviews because I didn’t believe in their products or services.
It is absolutely naive and short-sighted to think that mixing blogging and business diminishes integrity. If someone else doesn’t think they can do it with integrity, then don’t assume I can’t.
Oh, I shouldn’t get started - I’ve avoided writing about this for years because I would likely use four letter words for the first time in my blogging career and I always swore I wouldn’t go there.
[...] Lucretia Pruitt from GeekMommy.net has written What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? [...]
*Administrative EDIT*
Issues resolved with Mr. Kirtok - restoring pingback.
~GeekMommy
Lucretia, I’ve posted a reply to your comment at my blog. I wanted to add my note here also so you can read. I’ve found this blog post from Allen Stern’s (centernetworks) link. I’ve never visited your blog before, only had a chance to read this post quickly. Maybe spent a few minutes on this page, that’s all.
The disclaimer at the end of my blog post was a JOKE. I never meant anything about you nor anybody else at that joke. I haven’t even heard of WalMart’s Eleven Moms program until you’ve left a comment to my blog a few minutes ago. I used WalMart just because the topic was about KMart.
Again, my disclaimer joke was meant and written as a joke.
I hope this clears the misunderstanding.
Mr. Kirtok:
Thank you for resolving the issue. As you can tell, preserving not just my reputation but that of the other Walmart ElevenMoms is a matter I take close to heart.
We are a diverse, but honest group of bloggers trying to help Walmart to move into the Social Media space in a genuine and transparent way. Please be assured when I say that if any of us were ever to be compensated by Walmart we would be disclosing it thoroughly all over any post we made to that effect, multiple times.
Thank you for fixing the issue. And thank you for taking the time to clear it up for me.
Best,
~GM
[...] What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? by Lucretia M. Pruitt [...]
Guess I’m a little late to the party, but I wanted to say how much I enjoyed this post. Personally, I was blown away by the whole Izea controversy and that people were getting so upset over what was obviously a transparent and clearly disclosed sponsored post.
That aside, I think you really hit the nail on the head (several times, in fact) here. The first being that a person’s integrity isn’t contingent upon never earning any money from blogging.
As a blogger, I don’t comprehend why people seem to think anyone who earns a living from their efforts is somehow less than honorable.
Our time is worth something - whether monetarily or “something else.” It’s naive and really disrespectful to think otherwise, and I’m really glad that you pointed out how much time and effort goes into posting a contest, etc.
Again, great and thought-provoking post. Keep up the good work!
VERY well thought out post, Lucretia.
I trust Chris & Jeremiah - and you. So I’d “buy” what each of you sells, without qualms. I’d know I was responding to an honest evaluation of whatever was being sold.
[...] What is Your Time Worth? What’s Worth Your Time? : GeekMommy’s WebLife [...]
I think it’s pretty obvious there is a difference between the Kmart and Wal-Mart promotions but thanks for underscoring it for everyone. And maybe the Eleven Moms will get special treats under the tree for doing all you do without compensation!
[...] a significant buzz. It wasn’t KMart people were really concerned with though - it was Chris and the concepts of right/wrong in Social Media. Chris is, by far, a much larger brand in Social Media than KMart. The buzz that was generated [...]
[...] a significant buzz. It wasn’t KMart people were really concerned with though – it was Chris and the concepts of right/wrong in Social Media. Chris is, by far, a much larger brand in Social Media than KMart. The buzz that was generated had [...]