Helium and PayPerPost

What are Helium and PayPerPost? What do they have in common with me?

Both claim to be able to pay me to write which is probably the closest I will ever get to becoming a journalist (so am I a freelance journalist now?). This is how it should be really since the thought of a life long career in journalism does not have me jumping for joy, considering how much I love to write.

I guess this is the perfect compromise: Since few people frequent this blog anyway it wouldn't really matter if I sold out and started shilling links. I get motivated and paid while you occasionally get to read something good.

So why do I feel so bad about doing it? Helium is perfectly fine since I'm posting on another website so doesn't affect this one (unless I post something really good and link to it) but it's PayPerPost that's the problem.

PayPerPost works in the way that bloggers are paid to write articles on their blog advertising products/services etc. The problem I have with this is would I be selling out and losing the soul of the blog? For a (relatively) lucrative salary would I be forsaking everything I stand for? Would I no longer be able to command the respect of my fellow bloggers?

But then I thought, who cares? What's the point of having a popular blog if I'm not going to make any money out of it? All great TV channels have ads (except the BBC but then there's TV license, I can't exactly charge all my readers to read this blog. It isn't good enough yet) and I've got University to think about.

So expect some extremely biased posts in the future. A word of warning, I would give any post a miss that has the label "product".