I have recently signed The Geek Within up for Smorty, a pay-to-blog service that connects advertisers with bloggers. For bloggers, blog advertising is pretty easy. You are presented with a list of advertising opportunities and you choose which ones you would like to talk about. For Smorty, the post needs to be at least 150 words long and contain one link to the sponsor's website. The URL and link text is provided by the sponsor so all you have to do is copy it into your post and while 150 words sounds like a tremendous amount, it's really not. This paragraph alone is over 100 words! Some people think blogging for money is dishonest. I've heard people say it is "selling out." Personally, I don't see the problem with receiving money to talk about something that might interest other people. I don't get paid for any of my entertainment reviews, whether they be jdoramas, music, movies or television shows. Companies get free advertising all the time. When a person has a good experience with a company, they are apt to recommend the company to their friends. It's called word of mouth. However, in the blogging world, those word of mouth posts don't go away once someone reads them. You can easily google a term and find a blog post from a couple years ago talking about it. So this form of advertising is a bit more permanent than just telling your friends about it. People from around the world will be able to read your words. I like to compare it to a billboard. Companies don't get to advertise to thousands of people via a billboard for free, so why should they be able to advertise to thousands of people on the internet for free?

This post is sponsored.