Truth in advertising. Probably one of the most highly debated topics to crop up around blogging recently. A slew of services have risen in the past year around sponsored blog posts and the market has only just opened up with the medium slowly being accepted.
Smorty is one such blog advertising network where a blogger can get paid for blogging, by accepting campaigns set up by advertisers looking for product or website exposure. The main controversy around sponsored blog posts is the disclosure area. Smorty has no clear distinction about disclosure, but then again there isn't anything in their terms of service saying that you cannot disclose an opinion post. So a blogger is left to decide for themselves if they want to disclose or not, by the way this post has been sponsored* by Smorty.
Once your blog gets approved within 72 hours, after having met their criteria, you can start accepting campaigns. Smorty encourages you to write opinions and doesn't lay down any terms on the tone of the post. One weird rule I quite don't get is the word count requirement. Having a minimum word count is fine, but Smorty also says you cannot exceed more than 400 words for an opinion post? New campaigns get emailed to you automatically and it is up to you to log in quick enough and accept a post before all the slots are taken up.
If you don't want to get paid to blog, you can sign up for their affiliate program and send advertisers their way, for a commission on their total ad campaign cost. Advertisers looking to advertise on blogs may take a liking to Smorty as they look at over 20 factors before accepting a blog into their marketplace. Which means there are no low quality bloggers. But that doesn't necessarily mean there are high paying advertisers.
So, as I am constrained by their terms on words I could go on and talk more about them, but then they probably might not accept this post. Hey, I'm doing as they said I could, which is posting my opinion.
As for payments, you get paid weekly via PayPal on approved posts. So if you are prolific enough, and provided there are enough campaigns, it is pretty much like getting a weekly paycheck.
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how much they pay you for this post?