We’d like to interrupt this newsletter to say a few kind words about [Pay $8.00 to have your product mentioned here!]

No, no, the Trylon SMR Newsletter is not actually accepting payment for plugging products. But if we did take money from companies or organizations we wrote about, would that somehow compromise our integrity or would it not make the slightest difference to you? Or, what if we didn’t tell you that our subjects were paying us? What if we just found ways of downplaying that fact, such as mentioning it only in small type in an out of the way place?

Well, again, we’re not shilling for anyone on this site. But some bloggers have recently decided to do so on theirs, as pointed out in a recent Advertising Age article.

The story, “Want to Build Up Blog Buzz? Start Writing Checks for $8” [requires registration], focused on PayPerPost.com, a company that brokers agreements in which marketers pay bloggers for writing positive comments about products in blogs.

The article questions whether PayPerPost.com is distinctly different from Procter & Gamble paying a novelist to include references to its Cover Girl products or Coca-Cola paying "American Idol" to get Paula Abdul to sip from a Coke-branded cup.

The difference with PayPerPost.com is that unlike the agreements between two commercial ventures, it's done by everyday people. And, there is the issue of disclosure.

Some argue that PayPerPost.com could eventually derail the entire social fabric of social networks. Although there is no law set in stone, blogs have generally been assumed to be open places where individuals write only for themselves and their audiences. Those who have used blogs to hide a marketing agenda [see the newsletter’s recent article on Wal-Mart and Edelman] have paid a high price for feigning independence.