Plus if a new tool or resources has a lot of potential and you’d like to see it get a chance to fully blossom a little promotion may be just what it needs to see if it can be all you want it to be. (that the community needs it to be)

Just my 2 cents…lol

Kenney

The effect on your reputation really depends on how famous you are. The more famous you are the lesser the impact. For smaller blogs, room for error is much lesser.

Frankly speaking, my opinion of the bloggers mentioned didn’t change at all after they promoted those products. However, one things that did change my perception of John Chow was one of the bad reviews he did about Andrew Talk. It was pretty mean of him to just pick on a small-time blogger, waste his $400 and pretty much destroy his blogging career.

As for your comment on BlogRush, I don’t this it can be classified as a flop yet. It’s not been even a month since it’s launch. Every service/product has flaws. Believe me, give it a couple of months…

And yeah by the way, thanks for giving me an idea for a post!

Thanks for posting this stimulating conversation!

Your original question and this second question go hand-in-hand. I believe the reason that people enjoy “success” in any endeavor is NOT because of care (meaning caution), but because they fulfill a need.

We can think of many adjectives to describe the spectrum of successful people. Brash, daring, clever, hard-working, motivational, inspirational, charismatic.

If enough people are positively impacted by the actions of another, success is assured.

The gist of your second question becomes: how do people allow themselves to be impacted by blogs and websites?
I suspect that there is no one answer. Some people respond viscerally, others, intellectually.

One of my favorite subjects is body language. If we learn to read visual cues given by our audience, we have a better chance of communicating clearly. Over time, this ability creates a feedback loop, wherein the audience comes to EXPECT us to communicate in tune to their signals. That’s consistency, leading to a tendency to trust.

With blogs, if we learn to tap into what our readers want, we are more likely to achieve this same result.
This capability is not limited to how we write, since we can post images, videos and podcasts as well.

I’m sure there are some handy psychological words for all of this.

I prefer to say that some people respond to the warm and fuzzies, while others respond to a no-nonsense approach.

Finally, I would say that DEVIATING from the expected path may cause SOME people to change their trust level.

Cheers,

Mitch

The Best Hot Sauce Ever!

Wow! Your favorite columnist is doing a piece about your favorite condiment!

After reading the article, what might you conclude about this columnist’s reputation?

Your answer to that question says more about YOU than it does about the columnist. What this simply means is that reputation is based on trust.

I believe that readers determine the blogger’s reputation, rather than the blogger.
What the blogger determines is a consistency – which is either conducive to building trust or detrimental to that effort.

Here is an example: the author of the Harry Potter series has been called “evil”. Obviously, she has supporters as well. The point is, most of us don’t even know her, yet – for the most part – we have collectively elevated her because we trusted the quality of her work. Her consistency was conducive to that process.

That’s all social networking is, ya Digg?

Cheers,

Mitch

I find it interesting that you say “I think I do hold Darren and Yaro to a higher standard than I do Mr. Chow and I’m not sure whether that’s fair either”, yet you link out 3 times to John and not once to Darren or Yaro. An oversight perhaps?

I do agree that a blogger’s reputation is his or her greatest asset, but I think the harm comes with being totally one-sided, and failing to acknowledge both the positives and the negatives.

On the other hand, I think the 3 big bloggers you mentioned tend to present good info on their experiences with various products and like to give the last things a chance. It’s important to take risks in business and I think that’s alot of what we see with the promotions. As always, people need to do their homework and not just trust what they read online..

So if xy blogger writes that “xy and xy service is new on market and that they are offering this and that, so why not try” – thats ok.

But if that certain blogger says – “ok, this service is great, I made a bunch of money on it” – and it turns out he didn’t make any money from it, than he is giving us false information and this WILL influence his reputation.

The point with agloco, widgetbucks, blogrush and other programs are in marketing. If no one is talking about it, no one will get involve and then no one can make any profit from it (nor owners, nor users)

The misleading stuff is making claims you cannot back up, and worse, promoting something without disclosing that you are going to profit from others adopting the product.

I don’t think people should take my product reviews as gospel, not because I lie or mislead for my own benefit, but because I write with my tongue in my cheek.