About a year ago on a totally separate blog for a totally separate topic I put up a series of posts reviewing my experiences in ordering a products from two online services. 1 It’s something innocuous, but also something that you’d hate to invest money in and then find out is worthless. I’d rather keep these sites separate, so just pretend I’m talking about aftermarket replacement laptop batteries.
In any case, I also joined their affiliate programs and posted a coupon code. That in mind, I gave a completely honest and frank review of each.2 Both were decent services and I became rather highly ranked for those search terms.
Fast forward a year and I’ve made a little3 money off the affiliate links in those posts. Well, along with my payment recently I also received an e-mail from one of the companies – asking me to write an updated review and how much it would cost.
For some reason, if felt okay to give an honest review and include an affiliate link. For some reason, being paid to review… feels different. Now, at no point did they ask me to write a glowing, favorable, or otherwise review – just asked me to write a new review and how much it would cost.
What would you do?
This moral dilemma has been brought to you by the Pet Shop Boys