The reason I hate Payperpost so much is because it is *covert* marking. No one likes to be tricked or deceived–do you? Even worse is getting tricked and deceived by someone who you consider a friend who is doing it for money.

When we offered to pay social bookmarkers we did it with integrity and disclosure:

1. The social bookmarkers could submitt whatever they wanted. In fact, we don’t know what they post until they post it–just like you!

2. We are 100% transparent about who is a Navigator and who is not. It’s listed on the home page in fact!

3. The Navigators are paid community leaders who don’t just submit stories. They also help people who are learning how to use social news sites, they get ride of spam, and they close duplicate stories.

Now, back to PayPerPost.

If PayPerPost *forced* their bloggers to put in the first sentence a line that says “I’m be compensated by INSERT COMPANY NAME HERE to write this blog post,” I wouldn’t have a problem with it. However, PayPerPost can’t do that because no advertiser would want to look desperate like that.

There is a reason why PayPerPost bloggers and advertisers are covert–they are ashamed of what they are doing.

If PayPerPost and their bloggers are so proud of what they are doing they should be 100% transparent with their advertising. They should expose their advertisers on their site and under each advertiser have a list of the bloggers and their blog posts about that advertiser.

This will let the public understand what is going on.

I’m not against paying people to blog obviously–Weblogs, Inc. has paid bloggers more money than anyone in the world–but I do have a problem with deceptive advertising.