FTC (Federal Trade Commission) might get involved with paid posts. The FTC handles consumer complaints about products. I don’t know if any consumer has complained about paid post, but the FTC doesn’t like bloggers doing paid posts. According to Businessweek,
This summer, the government agency is expected to issue new advertising guidelines that will require bloggers to disclose when they’re writing about a sponsor’s product and voicing opinions that aren’t their own. The new FTC guidelines say that blog authors should disclose when they’re being compensated by an advertiser to discuss a product.
So basically the FTC wants bloggers to disclose that it is a paid plugin. But at times, most paid to blog or paid to post site requires bloggers not to disclose it is a paid post. Well, I think this guidelines would be for the popular blogs. Bloggers with small blog should have no worries because they wouldn’t be seen by FTC. Only Google that might see their blogs. Google would reduce your site PR if it catches you doing paid post.
I don’t see anything wrong with paid post. The only problem would be if the review is postive, but the blogger hasn’t tried the product. If the blogger has tried the product, he can give a postive or neutral review. When I was doing paid review, I prefer writing neutral post because I haven’t tried the product. I don’t want to wast my time lookng for positive reviews other blogs have written and try to compose my own. That is time wasting and stressful.
Optimize Your Comments On Blogs
Leaving comments on other blogs is one way of getting backlinks to your blog. If you leave useful comments, you would not only get backlinks, but you would get traffic to your blog. It is important to leave useful comments on blogs so that your comments can be posted on the blog to achieve the backlinks and traffic. If you post comments like “nice tips” or “This is an interesting article”, the blog owner might approve your comments.
I have when someone leaves misleading comments because it is annoying. I once had a commenter that left a comment that said that I have an intersting blog and he just subscribed to my feed. I was happy with that comment because someone just subscribed to my fed without me telling the person to subscribe. The next day, I saw the same exact comment on another of my blog. I don’t know how he found that blog. When I saw that comment, I knew that I was deceived. I always moderate the first comments on my blog. I delete his comment on this blog and on the other blog.
If you want to receive the benefits of commenting, you should leave useful comments. By useful comments, I mean that you should read the blog post. I can tell by reading someone’s comment if the person read or did not read a blog post. Don’t let people call you a spammer because spammers don’t read blog posts. They just copy and paste the same words on every blog they come across. If you leave useful comments, you would attract other blog readers to your blog. The readers would be curious about what your blog is about and what type of posts do you have on your blog. If you have what they are looking for, they might become regular readers and might subscribe to your feed.