I've spent the last hour reading all the commentary on Google's last move with the PR penalties to PPP (an similar) network participants, and I am hearing a lot of passionate argument from the side of entrepreneurial bloggers who earned the bulk of their income through PPP accusing Google of censorship and monopolization (PPP competes against Adsense?). I am also reading on some blogs who do not utilize such networks arguing that PPP posts are somewhat unethical because the line between advertising and genuine blogging are a little unclear. Does PPP pimp out bloggers to say whatever it is that they want them to say? The two sides are very interesting, and I guess the CEO of Izea (who owns PPP) has dove deep in the mud to sling at Google accusations of foul play saying blacklisting PPP network users is manipulating the system for questionable benefits to Google - what do you all think? What is the future of sponsored blogging?
Hmmm, that's something what almost everyone (blogger or a webmaster) is thinking at the moment, I think. Google penalization of some authority sites and blogs and that PPP issues though clouded the paid blogging thing, but I think there's still a market for it. I mean bloggers have many ways to sell links, and if they don't disclose paid links there should not be any problem. Besides that PPP's and similar services' future seems to be a gloom to me, but that's only my opinion.
It will exist, although some people will not do it as openly now as they used to before. People like to earn cash with their blog, and the advertiser wants link juice/ traffic. A win- win situation for both, as long as the blogger does not become so mad for money that he approves of every site that approaches him, irregardless of their niche and quality.
It will be a lot more underground and covered up, sponsored blogging will never disappear, as it provides a steady income, not to be ignored.
There isn't anything we can do. Google is the most widely used Search engine and they own the game. I think this latest attack on paid links is warranted for since their was such wide spred abuse but I don't agree that PPP should be penalized.
It seems to me that PPP was targeted directly from all the commentary that I read, and that is what I thought too, that many bloggers do sponsored arrangements on some level, yet PPP is who was targeted. I find it interesting that a couple years ago, or even like 5 years ago, Google was the media darling, and everyone simply loved Google as a tool and as a business (if you have ever read about Google's corporate culture, who would not want to work at Google? They have everything that any employee could possible want ...), but as they grew, I don't know if it was greed or just what comes with growth, they started making enemies trying to "run things" ... I was too young when Microsoft first came out, however I am not sure if they were also loved by everyone only to grow and be hated by masses because of their controlling business practices. I use Google and Google related services like Gmail, Google Groups (I remember using Deja.com to access news groups back in the day), Google images and now Google owns blogger and they are developing a service parallel to Paypal. They are everywhere and it always concerns me when the same company is connected to so many services that I use, partly because I have read too many conspiracy books and partly because it is just not sound business to rely on one source for all your income. I wonder if PPP was such a threat to Adsense, why didn't they just buy PPP out? LOL It's all very interesting discussion ...