Public relations consultant /blog

‘Dirty Deeds – Done Dirt Cheap
‘We are not paid for any of the reviews and articles, we do it because of our love for stuff. Yeah, we’re cheap and proud of it.’ – iPresents

That almost two-thirds of bloggers (63%) believe blogs to be the most trustworthy sources of product information, reveals the naïvety of the early adopter. There is no reason to believe that a self-appointed ‘Citizen Journalist’ should be any more trustworthy than a professional journalist who’s been trained in the ethics of their industry and worked so much harder to get their words into print.

By way of example, consider iPresents, which is one of a great many gadget blogs. ‘We are not paid for any of the reviews… we do it because of our love for stuff,’ they say. Yet most iPresents product reviews link to online stores via affiliate marketing schemes. Each time a reader is tempted to buy after reading iPresents glowing review of the iPod Shuffle and clicks the link to the Apple Shop, iPresents earns a commission. (Apple pay just 2.5%, so they’d have been better off advising people to buy iPod Shuffles through Amazon, who’d pay at least double that.)

I certainly don’t begrudge iPresents its commission, I use the same affiliate marketing links throughout my blogs and iPresents’ hasn’t been paid by Apple to give the iPod Shuffle a good review.

However, iPresents does make money from reviews and the better the review the more money iPresents is likely to make. The relationship is subtle and perhaps a little confusing, but it’s there. The traditional media disparagingly calls this sort of thing ‘advertorial’ and agrees it should be clearly labelled. It will be interesting to see how long blogs are trusted before similar ethical codes are introduced. Caveat Emptor!
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Posted at : October 11th, 2005 - 8:02 am
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