My Facebook inbox has an interesting message in it right now.
Here it is, paraphrasing:
“Hi Matt,
We are enjoying your series of posts about blockchain tokens. Are you able to do a sponsored post about our upcoming ICO, (link here), on your steemit account?”
A Few Facts About Sponsorships
Before I address if I should do sponsored posts or not, there are a few points I wanna make:
(1) I view sponsorships as a superior monetization model to pure advertising. When random ads are run on content ala YouTube, there’s no way to stop ethically unsound businesses from using your content for their own gain. With a sponsorship, you can pick and choose who you work with.
(2) There’s a lot of simple money in sponsorships. If a blogger charged $100 per sponsored post and did two per week, that would be a simple way to generate an extra $200 per week.
(3) Most successful podcasters seem to use the sponsorship model: One or two advertisements, read at the start of the podcast, where the show makes a full endorsement of a product.
Sponsorships Need to Be Transparent
The most important thing is honesty. I would never do a post that looked like my own opinion, but actually was paid for. I’d never write positive words about something I didn’t actually like. Honesty is #1.
If the sponsorship is transparent, I don’t see much of an ethical issue. Every sponsored post should have a full sentence within the first 100 words that say it is sponsored. Something like “Full Disclosure: This Post is Sponsored By [person/group]. I only accept sponsorships from brands that I respect.”
The content can still be good too. It just means I can’t accept sponsorships from brands whose products I don’t like. Nobody is gonna pay me to write a negative review of them. So I have to do my due diligence first and only accept the sponsorship if I really like the project.
What Do You Think?
Are clearly marked sponsored posts acceptable on steemit? Would you enjoy seeing that kind of content so long as it was honest and transparent? I value and appreciate your feedback on this one.
