Bloggasm

Business Week has an article out today debating the merits of Pay Per Post, the advertising strategy of paying bloggers to blog about a product — with or without full disclosure. As the article notes, this idea isn’t exactly new; advertorials (advertisements dressed up like opinion columns) have existed in magazines, newspapers and talk radio for years. But it’s something relatively new to the blogosphere, and I suppose the ethics of pay-per-post still merit a debate.

Other than Google Adsense I’ve never carried advertising on Bloggasm, but that’s not to say I haven’t thought about what strategies I would implement if I ever were to try to write here full time. If I ever decided to join an advertising network (Blogads for instance) and managed to maintain a steady line of advertisers, I would engage in a practice that surprisingly few bloggers use: Thanking my sponsors.

It’s the perfect middle ground between pay-per-post and banner ads. In fact, you’re only thanking the sponsors who have purchased banner ads on your site.

How would it work? It’s simple. You pick a day to run the thank-you post every week (since most advertisers stick with you for at least a week), and then you offer full disclosure and provide links to your sponsors.

For the fun of it, I’ll write a “thank you” post that Daily Kos could run today:

Thanks to our sponsors

I just want to take the opportunity today to thank our sponsors, who make running this site possible. This is not an endorsement of any causes or products.

1. The Green Festival Reader presents addresses of the foremost thinkers and activists including, Van Jones, David Korten, Dennis Kucinich, Bill McKibben and more.

2. Join us for the Netroots Nation Yes We Can Party on Monday, January 19, at the Clarendon Ballroom in Arlington, VA (just off the Orange Metro line).

3. Taking on the System. “This book captures the spirit of our nation’s modern-day pamphleteers” – Elizabeth Edwards

And that’s it. By doing this, not only are you exposing your fully-disclosed sponsors to your RSS readers, who may not often click through to the site, you’re also displaying them to those who have ad block and the readers who mentally ignore banner ads. And assuming that you write several posts a day and only publish one “thank you” post a week, then your readers won’t feel like they’re being bombarded with advertorials. Also, advertisers would be much more willing to work with you because they know how much value comes with such a post.

Best of all, I would consider a “thank you” post to be much less ethically murky than a pay-per-post.