I’ve been thinking of doing a post about what I call “grey-area paid links” for some time, so when John of Eggrage wrote a post yesterday slamming Chris Garrett for blogging about a Supercar driving day my interest was piqued. Now, first of all let me say that there’s been a lot of…um… “rage” flying about because of this (but no eggs for some reason) and I get the feeling that by writing about this I might be opening myself up for some of it. But whatever, it’s a hot topic so here goes.
I think the point of John’s post was to say that he doesn’t agree with bloggers using their blogs to promote things outside of their ‘genre’. In his book it’s tantamount to spam. So Chris Garrett ‘ruined’ his internet marketing blog, because he wrote a post about a Supercar day and linked to the supplier, Supercars having nothing whatsoever to do with internet marketing. John goes on to say that it’s hypocrisy because Chris and the other bloggers who wrote about the Supercar day preach good SEO practice and then create ’spam’ on their own blogs.
So far so good. John’s angry that these bloggers got something for free and then wrote about it and of course there’s an argument to say that he’s right. After all, this is a prime example of my grey-area paid links. If someone sends you a free product and you write a review of it and link to the supplier, is that a paid link? Well sort-of, yes! You’ve been given an incentive after all!
On the other hand, bloggers write about stuff all the time. My mum wrote a book for example and I did a post about it. If she sold it online I’d have linked to her, and yes I had an incentive to write that post (she gave me a book). Pretty much everyone with a blog has written about a product or service, but John seems to be arguing that it’s only OK if you didn’t get it for free. Otherwise it’s just spam.
The trouble is, this is a HUGE grey area. In the case of the Supercar day, it was a genuinely great experience and of course people wanted to blog about it! The same goes for loads of other products that bloggers get. Bloggers also totally pan things if they don’t like them - if someone sends you a free camera and you write a post saying “it’s shit”, would you still be guilty of paid linking? John makes the point that he hates ‘paid positive reviews’ whether they’re online or in magazines or whatever. Well, what if the review is negative but you still get paid?
I think that bloggers have been writing about stuff for years, and linking to stuff for years, and in the world of marketing sending out products and getting user feedback on blogs is an established technique. If the reviews are good then that’s great, and if they’re bad then you know you have to work on your offering. The fact that you have to send something out to get a review in the first place just goes to show that people won’t do something for nothing. So when John accuses the bloggers of arranging a free day out so that a client would get some links…well, yes that was the end result but as Patrick pointed out in the comments, the bloggers did what bloggers do and blogged about their experience. Grey area!!
The trouble with the whole Eggrage post is that it pretty much started out as a personal attack on Chris Garrett. Then when people inevitably started commenting, John used phrases like “Patrick, you are clearly just a pathological liar” and “You are what I like to refer to as a “scumbag”” and my personal favourite “I am flattered that you girls are calling each other to come help”.
Dude, girls rule.
Any point John was trying to make was overshadowed by the militant way he went about it. Dave Naylor wrote his own reply which has been described by John as nasty and libelous…which sounds a little like pot-calling-kettle to me.
To wrap this all up, I have to say that John’s managed to create a lot of interest in his blog thanks to this fiasco and if that was the motivation then bravo. As I said above though, this could have been a good debate about bloggers being paid for links…but it’s not. It’s just a big mess, and the author of Eggrage has come out with egg on his face.
