Is it ethical offering paid reviews through your blog? - Part 1

The ethical nature of offering paid reviews through a blog had been questioned so much for so long. Some people like John Chow seem to charge $500 for a paid review while some people like my good friend Mike Huang seem to think it’s highly unethical. But, at the end of the day, what matters is what you believe. It’s your blog and it’s your morals. If you do a bad job at it, for an instance, being a sell-out, then it’s very likely that your blog will crumble down, as a result.

Some readers will absolutely hate you for delivering paid reviews and most of them will never care. That’s the truth. But, how unethical can unethical get? I carried out a research on LinkedIn for this purposes. I got many responses and some I’d like to note down some noteworthy and that you may find interesting.

John Saddington - Innovation Technology & Strategist / Enterprise Content Producer at Dell, Inc. had this to say:

“If it’s compelling enough and has a solid business model, go for it. Setting something up like that shouldn’t cost much, if anything. Worth a shot!”

I personally agree with John. Offering paid reviews is very compelling - financially. Big bucks in small time. And fairly a simply business model. One fore the pros.

Kathleen Lietzau - Writing Tutor and a Peer Advising Associate at University of Richmond said:

“Usually, you need to establish yourself as an expert in a certain field/niche, with a good number of readers, or no one will bother paying you to write about their product since no one will read it. Also, if you are a site that is only doing paid reviews, you might not get as many readers, because they won’t trust you as much as if you write about things that you personally believe in, even if you do get paid for those.”

This is really important. When offering paid reviews, what advertisers expect is to have an opinion (positive or negative being circumstantial) from a person who’s opinion is well-respected. And for that, “establish[ing] yourself as an expert in a certain field/niche” is really important.

Quoting Kristen Stieffel - News Assistant at Orlando Business Journal:

“Paid “reviews” aren’t reviews, they are advertisements. The product seller is buying an ad, and the blogger is writing ad copy. Even if the review isn’t entirely favorable, it’s still product placement, which is close enough to advertising as to make no difference.”

Well yeah, it probably makes us question about the ethicalness of advertising itself. After all, when you display an advertisement in the sidebar, you’re featuring a product/service for your readers. And a paid review is no difference. But being a sell-out and actually recommending it, throwing away your honest opinion, makes a huge difference. After all, unless you’re really contended with what you’re reviewing, ethicalness of blogging requires you to offer constructive criticism.

[contd...]