In the interests of full disclosure, I will note that I am hoping to get paid for this blog post.

PayPerPost is a new service where bloggers can get paid for writing articles on certain topics. TechCrunch has denounced this service as doing irreparable damage to the reputation of the blogosphere. And just to be hypocritical, they’ve offered $100 to anyone else who wants to give their opinion.

So I’m going to take them up on that offer.

I foresee several blogs quickly decaying into advertising sites, blatantly supporting certain products, “selling their soul” as TechCrunch puts it. However, I think most of the blogs that make use of this service will manage to do it without hurting their reputation. Even if disclosure of payment isn’t required, I think many bloggers will disclose anyway. This seems to me like a better deal than, say, putting up Google Ads, because those are just annoying.

However, my position is skewed: I keep my blog for fun, and I don’t try to make money from it.

I signed up for PayPerPost, and I’m going to try it out to see what happens. But, I’m going to lay some ground rules:

• I will always make a note at the bottom of a sponsored post.
• All sponsored posts will go into the PayPerPost category.
• And I will never give a product a good review if it doesn’t deserve it.
• Edit: One more rule that I just thought of: only one sponsored post per day. Period. I may have to switch posts if the money gets better somewhere else, but at any given point, one post per day.

It looked like many of the blogging “opportunities” didn’t require a good review anyway.

More of Italy coming soon…or maybe I’ll just update my old posts with photos.

Edit: I was slightly mistaken. TechCrunch did not sponsor this post. Ted Murphy, the owner of PayPerPost, put the opportunity up to try and raise the stakes, asking if it was so easy to pass up $100 for 100 words. Please disregard what I said about hypocrisy.

This post sponsored by http://www.payperpost.com.