Blogging for Dollars.

Blogging for dollars or pay per post is a relatively new and growing area within blogging and internet marketing.

The concept is reasonably simple; you offer to pay a blogger to create a post on their blog about you, your product or your service. This post could be a review, a comment or simply a rambling post about anything you ask them to post about.

The benefits of having others blog about your product or service can be significant. When others blog about your site it will help improve your network of back links (this will help you achieve better SEO rankings), it can directly refer traffic to your site, it can impact your brand awareness, and it can provide you with valuable feedback regarding your offerings.

So far there are a few companies that have caught my attention in this space.

http://sponsoredreviews.com
I'm sure there are more, and there will be more soon, as this appears to be a growing business opportunity.

payperpost.com already boast clients such as HP and ZDNet.

So the interesting question that comes to mind now is: How valuable or trust worthy will blogs be in the future as a source of impartial information if people are being paid to write them?

I don't know how I feel about it. I think it is a great opportunity for marketers to help promote their business as it can help you in so many different ways. I'm not sure how it will impact the blog community and the general surfer who still doesn't really understand what a blog is. Blog purists will like not like the idea at all. People who are just being introduced to blogs might come to the conclusion that all blogs are just for marketing purposes and not trust them.

As I said the jury is still out for me.

What do you think?