It’s funny what a difference between the blog world and the print world there is. In print it goes almost entirely unnoticed when someone writes an editorial about a product (not something hugely important such as the presidential candidates) that they have been paid to endorse. I suppose that one of the wonderful things about blogging is the honesty and trust that comes naturally from the community that surrounds each blog.

Thanks for your insightful comments on the topic. I hope to hear from you again!

It’s really hard to divorce self interest from genuinely useful material and the presence of their icon / disclosure doesn’t really reduce that concern for the reasons below.

Regardless of the probity of the poster and their belief that they are not influenced by the system I don’t believe that to be the case.

If there were to be an ongoing effort to demonstrate to the contrary just how little effect the paid content is having could end up being more trouble than it’s worth.

I love people making money of their passion and knowledge, I’m all in favor of pay per post doing similar but I’ve always had issues with the idea that the introduction of money,into any arena, has no effect.

If it truly had zero effect on what was going to appear online the company wouldn’t be in business and you wouldn’t have written this post.