The past few years have been marked by an upsurge in bloggers as news sources. For many this has signaled a positive change by taking the news out of the filter of the major media. Some see blogs as a source of more immediate information from people on the scene or with a variety of views on any specific topic. But others see bloggers as a source of dangerous information since there is no oversight for these sources of information and no way to verify where bloggers are obtaining their information or how accurate it is.
But there is another aspect of blogging that we need to be aware of. Search on “How to Blog” on any major search engine and you’ll find lots of information on how to blog for money. The “blog for money” information usually involves affiliate marketing. And, yes, you can make money from it. It’s not a scam. The right blog for the right affiliate can earn money. But of course it does take work. But rather than discussing how to make money from affiliate marketing, I want to pose a question – is this process of blogging for money a danger to blogger’s objectivity.
Now affiliate bloggers often blog to direct readers to a specific product, be it books on Amazon.com or online casinos. And often they are very upfront that they are an affiliate. You’ll see it when they ask readers to use their link to purchase from Amazon. The reader doesn’t incur any more cost and the blogger makes a few pennies. Everyone is happy. But then the question arises – would a blogger give a product a bad review if they’re an affiliate?
Now, I don’t have an answer to this. They might. Certainly it could be tempting when reviewing a book to write a good review because readers are less likely to follow the link and buy a book with a bad review. But as bloggers we have to keep in mind the long term benefit to our blogs. Take the book example. Good reviews might seem to sell more books, but if readers are dissatisfied with the product they find following a blogger’s links, they are going to be less likely to take that blogger’s advice in the future. So the long term benefit for the affiliate blogger is to provide useful and objective information for their readers.