Recently a study was conducted on "The State of Blog Relations" by APCO Worldwide and the Council of Public Relations Firms. PR Week wrote an editorial, "Paying Bloggers Risks the Notion of 'Earned Media,'" based on one aspect of the study. PR execs and bloggers were asked to respond to this statement: It is okay to compensate bloggers for writing about my clients, but it is not up to me to tell them to disclose the payment."
PR execs disagreed (96%) with this statement. But 48% of bloggers agreed, and another 16% were neutral or had no opinion.
If you were approached by a company and offered $5,000 a month to write positively about their product(s), -- and let's say you didn't really care for the product -- would you 1) take the money; and 2) disclose to your readers that you were being paid?