Thank you for sharing your views, you’ve given some great food for thought.

One of the issues that seems to have popped up (certainly from the comments so far) is where compensation becomes paid. As you say, getting first shot at a product that you can keep is generally seen as compensation – extra does seem bizarre.

I guess one way to look at it is from a PR slant. If a PR agency is trying to win a client and they wine and dine them and treat them to free events and tickets, is that in the same vein? Where would the acceptable compensation begin and end?

I can see charging for hosting and web space as being reasonable – it’s like a company hiring a hall for a raffle event, still needs to be paid for and usually by the company wishing to run the event.

With the FTC looking at paid blogging and advertorial practices in social media, perhaps this could help elevate the ethical bloggers and agencies while outing the ones looking to take advantage where possible?

Interesting times ahead, for sure.

We – as in PR and bloggers – need to have some way that we can all work out best practices and relationships for all involved. I know there have been suggestions regarding official bodies to help this move forward – but until it happens, it’s still talk and the relationships continue to suffer.

I definitely agree that some of the best ‘censoring” of fake reviews are the readers – they know your voice and they know if you’re BS’ing them.

That’s great info, thanks – I wasn’t aware of them, I will definitely check them out.

I run a review and giveaway blog and I have never asked for compensation on top of being provided a review product. If I get a product for review, I consider that my compensation and will blog negative or positive based on my experience. I, however, would not do a review without a product so a paid review is out of the question as I feel that it isn’t right to blog about something you haven’t had any experience with, paid or not.

Most bloggers, including myself, are not paid to write so I do charge for advertising space and I may charge for hosting a giveaway. That’s not to say if I use a product in my home that I bought myself and found that it was outstanding, I would mention that for free if I thought my readers would benefit from the amazing product too. Paying for my domain name and hosting isn’t free and neither is my time.

I can see charging to run a giveaway (if no product review is involved) as we generally do not receive any compensation in writing the post, marketing the giveaway, and a go between medium between the company (through PR) and winner that can easily take an hour or more of your time. Being paid to write a review post and then having the gall to ask extra to ensure a positive review is grossly crossing the line! It’s no wonder some PR have a bad taste for bloggers when some bloggers are pulling these types of stunts.