James posted about my sponsored posts last weekend. The post is pretty critical, but not all that uncommon as of late. Part of the problem is that my feed is on Planet CS who’s community is largely based of people who would disagree with the underlying principles of sponsored blog posts. I’ve asked to have my feed unsubscribed early this week to avoid further upsetting this community.
I’d like to start by pointing out that I really like and respect James. He’s a really good guy, really smart and I wish the man nothing but the best. That being said, I don’t necessarily feel that what he’s said is fair. I’ll start with the opening referring to “a certain blogger”. While I appreciate the attempt at making generic references, they’re not generic if everyone knows who you’re talking about. This problem also recently arose when I was slagged by a teacher in a class who referred to “the webmaster” apparently in an attempt not to name names from what one of the students told me.
“Selling out to the man”. ‘Nuff said on that one.
His graph is certainly accurate, but what the graph doesn’t represent whether the sponsored posts are interesting or informative. While I’ll be the first to admit that some of the sponsored posts are way off-topic and not of interest to anyone who normally reads this blog, I think it’s completely unfair to write them all off just because they’re sponsored. Also the posts about “schilling” are actually of great interest to others out there like me. I was looking for information on these programs and couldn’t find that much. That lead me to believe that it might be useful to put some information out there.
Finally, “you actually need people to read your blog to make money from it.” Well that’s just plain not true. Anyone who thinks this is true should go read up on slippery vs sticky websites.
While there’s nothing wrong with criticism, I don’t always feel that it’s fair. Again, James is a good guy, I just happen to disagree with him disagreeing with what I do 
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5 responses so far ↓
1 Sean // Jan 21, 2007 at 11:56 pm
I was looking for information on these programs and couldn’t find that much.
I can see that for some of your posts, but for others….. have you really needed to find out information about UK loans or Internet lawyers? Just what ARE you up to these days? :p
I’ve had a few ideas about sponsored posts kicking around in my head for the last while, and I have finally verbalized many of them on my site
2 Marc // Jan 22, 2007 at 9:37 am
That particular setence was in reference to me writing posts about my sponsored posting experience, not about the sponsored posts themselves.
I read your post. It’s very good and I think you’re spot on with the bulk of it.
3 mike // Jan 22, 2007 at 12:45 pm
I’m with James in saying you should not leave planet.cs.dal.ca. There are at least a dozen people I’d “vote off” before you, so if they are staying so should you.
Sure, I don’t care about most of the products you promote, but I also don’t really care about “WOT I DONE THIS WEEK LOL” posts, and there is no shortage of them. You at least throw in a real post every now and then.
I say you keep making sponsored posts, I keep mocking sponsored posts, and we all continue getting along just fine.
4 Sean // Jan 22, 2007 at 1:02 pm
Ooops, I neglected to properly connect it with the the schilling comment, my bad.
I agree with Mike. While I don’t care about a most of the sponsored content (like the preciously mentioned UK loans), but you still do post interesting things. And the planet is about what all the Dal FCS people (past and present) are up to. If one person just seems happens to be up to sponsored posts, who are others to say that this is worse than a three page entry on what someone has been up to in the last month?
5 Marc // Jan 22, 2007 at 1:47 pm
No worries, after a few back and forth e-mails over the weekend, James suggested that filtering the sponsored posts out would be a reasonable solution. That’s what we’re going to try for now. I’ll elaborate on it all in a post later.