30 October, 2006

I don’t know how my aunt’s going to react when she gets in this afternoon, and I don’t have my share of the mortgage and bills.

I don’t get my PayPerPost money (from the puzzle I put together) until Wednesday. It would make the difference I need in covering my bills.

Job searches are going horribly today.

All I can do… is pray.

@buzz@

So, I’m cruisin’ the ’sphere this morning, and pop in on my WP dashboard to check the news and latest PPP offers.

I spotted that once again, [tag]Mike Arrington[/tag] is going on and on (again) about that paid blogging craze known as [tag]PayPerPost[/tag]. It’s like he has a hateboner or something over it.

In his recent rant, he states:

Don’t look for PayPerPost to require blogger disclosure anytime soon. Instead, they are creating a distraction, designed to keep the buzz about PayPerPost going strong, as well as to move people’s attention away from the core issue of blogger disclosure of product shilling.

Yes, he’s right. Don’t look for it to be an absolute requirement. PayPerPost is just the intermediate between advertisers and bloggers, just like eBay is the intermediate between buyer and seller. Each can ask the parties involved to behave responsibly, and in the case of absolutely unfair actions on either party, throw the offending party out on their ass.

PayPerPost can ask us posties to offer a [tag]disclosure policy[/tag] of some sort.
eBay can ask sellers to not sell Hong Kong bootleg DVDs.

Let’s take a moment to look at the word that seems to pop out of his mouth all the time: shill.
As a noun, this word is defined as:

1. A person paid to endorse a product favourably, while pretending to be impartial.
2. An accomplice at a confidence trick during an auction or gambling game.

I’d suggest he finds a new word, or actually learn just what PayPerPost is, rather than just declaring in a single glob that posties are scum and shills.
Things that I have mentioned in my PayPerPost entries are things that I actually am interested in.
My family is enjoying [tag]Cellfire[/tag], which I can thank that advertiser for (again).
I’m enjoying [tag]Amie Street[/tag] immensely, and particularly am absorbed with Now On (which has that old-school, Jurassic 5-like feel).
I can actually push [tag]List’d Express[/tag] as an easy to use tool for selling things on eBay: I hate the several pages of crap they make you fill out, just to sell an item for a few bucks. It’s a verifiable headache. List’d shortcuts you through all of that.

Strangely, his whole rant reeks of a lack of research, once again, tinged with a hint of jealousy.
He sees that PayPerPost is moving in the right direction, in giving users the ability to generate a policy (though I wrote my own, and you can locate it in the sidebar as “I disclose”), and still has the need to say what he does.

Should’ve tried a different angle, like, “Oh, PayPerPost now offers a Disclosure Policy Generator, but it needs _____.”

Thanks for the free links, I guess, but [tag]TechCrunch[/tag], please, lay off that horse. It’s dead already.