A year ago, give or take a couple of weeks, I signed up with a certain company. They promised to never make me link to porn or questionable sites, and I agreed to link to whatever assignments they gave. For the most part, this isn’t a problem, but sometimes, it feels like I am in bed with the devil! See, the agreement means that they don’t really have to pay much attention to which blogs they pass which assignments, too. Like this week, for instance: I had a life insurance link for this blog which I managed to work into a post in what I considered to be a reasonably effective yet unobtrusive way, only to look down my list and see this: life insurance quotes, from a different sponsor. Yes, I just made a sentence with two colons. I have mad English Skillz, I tells ya. My point is, umm, duh! I have five blogs with them, and could they not possibly have spread those two links out? How do you advertisers feel about that? Do you think you are getting your money’s worth?
And over at their forum, which they have, but we aren’t allowed to quote it OR link to it, if you mention something like this, you are accused of trying to weasel out of your assignments, people volunteer to take your work, and the thread is locked and/or deleted. And yet there are still people going on and on about the wonderfulness of the company. Now, don’t get me wrong, the company is run by a nice group of people, and for the most part, I enjoy the work I do for them. But it would be nice to be able to express a concern or ask a question without the saccharin crowd coming after me with pitchforks.
Speaking of saccharin crowds, it’s interesting that all of them apparently hate the one paid blogging company that does take feedback from it’s users and also allows (no, encourages) it’s bloggers to pick and choose relevant topics. But, hey, I at least got the link in, right?
Now let’s discuss that one where they want me to create a logo and a business card, screenshot it, crop it, post it and tell how easy it all was for $7.50. Hahahahhahahahah, yeah right.
AGREED.
I also find it extremely ironic that my travel blog gets links for “life insurance,” “condos,” and “real estate,” but my home/house blog gets links for “caribbean”,and golf clubs, and another computer blog I have gets links for “motion sensor lights” and “tv lifts.” How I would love to put these links in their proper places! Grrrrr! It is indeed ironic. Don’t get me wrong, I am very glad to get paid for blogging. I just hafta wonder who makes the choices for the links??
Why did you agree to do paid posts in the first place, the money can’t be worth teh effort surely??
Actually, it usually is. The particular company I am discussing here usually pays 5 bucks for a freeform assignment, meaning we can talk about anything under the sun as long as we place the link in. That isn’t usually a problem at all, but this time they are asking what I consider much more effort for not much more money.
The company I prefer, I just don’t choose the assignments that I don’t feel offer enough money for the effort.
Because they are the crazy??