Have you been nominated? Probably. Just about everyone has. It's understandable to be flattered but before you promote their activities, use their bug and ask for "votes", please be aware they are a part of PayPerPost an organization that you might not want to be affiliated with in any way shape or form.
PayPerPost were the ones who pioneered paying bloggers to shill for various clients. Call it advertorial, or advertising, it was very unethical the way they went about it. Now they require that posters reveal that they are being paid to say something nice about a product or service but frankly it still makes my skin crawl! This kind of activity damages the credibility of all bloggers.
This Post was written by Amy from Cooking with Amy.
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14 comments:
Hmm, funny. I figured it was just run-of-the-mill link baiting. What better way to get people to link to you, after all, then to tell them you recognize their work. I let them "nominate" me but didn't bother putting up a post about it; I didn't see any need to boost their Google standing, but if they want to boost mine, it's no skin off my nose.
Plus, even if I weren't already blase about awards, being one nominee among hundreds didn't strike me as notable.
As someone who wasn't nominated I am now feeling rather special.
These Awards Seem to have been overrun by the Vegan community which I find rather interesting.
It is possible to write and I have seen bad reviews. In and of itself paid reviews are not evil, paid dishonest reviews are evil.
I pay no attention to those awards, but I suppose that subconsciously I think nominees must be good.
I did notice the vegan bloc voting and it kept me from bothering, which is I suppose what they had in mind. They must think they need some promo to make up for recent headlines about killing babies.
I got an email from someone out of the blue and wondered why the hell he nominated me. I thought is was possibly a link building excercise which is why I haven't promoted it. Glad to have this confirmed.
I went and registered and voted before I found out that they were run by pay-per-post.
Then I had them delete my account and votes.
Several weeks later I got an email from a fellow who wanted to nominate me. I kindly declined (without saying that I didn't care for pay-per-post).
I did notice the vegan contingent over there and found it interesting, I figured it was just a meme in veganland.
Thank you for this informative post Amy; I (like many of us) take these things seriously.
Would someone clarify how PayPerPost benefits from us? Is it the links / publicity? I am sure many others in our community would be interested in knowing this.
Thanks,
Susan from Food Blogga
OK I was voted and was honored and flattered that someone thought my blogs were worth it. I also promoted it on my own blogs and voted for other blogs. Golly I now feel like an idiot and naive.
I, like Susan, would be interested in how this works.
I have taken the badges down form my blogs and was wondering if I need to do anything else.
Their awards and conference are all ways to build credibility and visibility with bloggers. Only it's sneaky because you have to dig to realize it's PayPerPost behind the whole thing. A little flattery goes a long way towards creating more positive associations especially with bloggers (who they need to make their business run).
I was excited about it for about 5 minutes and put up a link to it on my blog. Then I did a little research and figured it was some kind of self-promoting scam and took down the link/badge.
As for the vegan community voting, I may be partially to blame for that. I let my readers know that you can vote for more than one blog, and I think a lot of them went through and voted for every vegan blog. Since then, I've told anyone who asks not to bother voting, especially if you haven't already given them your email address. I saw a suspiciously large increase in spam on the email address I used to register with them.
Thanks for the heads up. I'm blase about awards, but I had to laugh when I saw the stamp "Warning: Adult Content!"on my site's nomination page. Probably because I'm not vegan.
YUP I got a nomination too...
I didn't give it too much thought, but I'm glad to know what this actually is.
THANKS!
L - Yes, we all know that your food is triple XXX! I like to bathe in it's badness on a daily basis, but, hey, I am an adult.
Too funny!!!
I have no record of being even considered for nomination, so I'm with Homesick Texan, my blog (which features red meat at least once a week) is "adult content" and NOT part of the apparent game plan? :)
Thanks for the info Amy. I was also nominated but had no idea who was behind it.
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