In which we consider whether a bottle of Dawn dishwashing liquid is payment for a blog post, or if it is rather a sample on which to base an opinion which one might express in such a blog post, complete with the biting humor you have come to know and love.

My friend, Elizabeth received a bottle of Dawn dish detergent in order to review it. Now, PPP has decided that she was in fact PAID for the review with this soap, and they are therefore not going to pay her for the review she did though them for another product. Bear in mind that Elizabeth’s blog is built solely on consumer reviews, that’s what it’s always been, even before it was accepted for PPP. Here’s how PayPerPost justifies their decision:

A sponsored post is any post for which you received something (cash, goods or services) in exchange for writing the post. In this post you say, ” I received a free bottle of Dawn Simple Pleasures in exchange for this review.” This leads me to believe that you would not actually be writing the review if you were not receiving something for it, i.e. you did not write this post because you tried a new product and decided to share your thoughts. Because of this, I do have to uphold the rejection as this is in violation of our Terms of Service regarding Interim posts. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you again for blogging with PayPerPost.

Needless to say, I totally disagree with their assessment of the situation, and here are various things I have said in the past two days to support my position that what Elizabeth received was not a payment.

How can they send you a bottle in exchange, if you do the review after? What if you did not write about it? Will the P&G police come take it back?

and

You were paid in………….dish soap. Clearly, this is a product in high demand, and everyone wants dish soap, and you are liable to get mugged on the streets of New York for your dish soap. Be careful not to let anyone see how much dish soap you have they will be jealous!

It’s FREAKING DISH SOAP. It’s not a payment, it’s a sample.

and

They pay in cash, which I can then use to purchase things like shoes and food. Unlike you, who are now apparently content to work for dish soap. How’s that working out for you? Doesn’t it get a little messy to measure it out when you buy things?

and

Re:dish soap, I am still trying to figure out how you are going to spend that.

I was laying awake last night as I often do, being a relative insomniac, and I though to myself: Self, if hamburger went on sale for 2.49 a pound, and Elizabeth wanted to stock up, and she might, having a family of five, and all, why she’d only need to haul TWENTY bottles of dish soap down there to the store to get 20 pounds of hamburger meat. And just right there, I realized how MONEY came to be such a popular way to PAY people.

and

Food I might could understand, since it does constitute a rather large segment of most people’s budgets. Dish soap is really pretty negligible on the budget list, generally less than 1% of the budget.

But, totally I would blog for gift cards to grocery stores so that I could choose dish soap OR food depending on which I needed at the time.

and

And, oh by the way, I’m totally blogging this. No charge, You can keep your soap

Now, PPP has done some totally asinine junk in the past few months, in their quest to build a good, dependable, literate stable of bloggers, and I have mostly kept my complaints on the boards and off my blogs, because it should mostly be internal business. You may have noticed fewer posts through their market place on this blog, as I have come to certain decisions about them, but I have avoided calling the whole wide world to witness their stupidity. But this latest thing that they have done, to declare themselves the arbitrators of blogging payments, is just beyond the pale. Would you work for SOAP? Would anyone you know actually work for household cleanser?? No, I didn’t think so.

PPP is failing miserably at obtaining and retaining quality bloggers because they are failing to be proactive. They accept far too many marginal blogs, and then when those blogs get worse instead of better, they try to fix it by making a new rule, by reacting. And the bloggers who get pinched by that are the good bloggers. The bad ones don’t care — they will just continue to write a semi-coherent post for PPP, then some claptrap about the color of the sky (usually blue, occasionally grey, duh) or Phoenix real estate exactly 4 sentences long and then another post for PPP. And because they are technically within the rules, their posts get approved, and they write for PPP another day. Good bloggers, like yours truly (ha), who write 902 (currently) words and then throw in a link like I just did are then left with a choice: write another huge article that takes an hour or more so they can write a $10 (at best) post for PPP, write a short piece so they can write a post for PPP, or stop at the $5 they will get hassle-free for the real estate link and move on.

Which do you think I will choose, after 994 words?