Several times per week I receive a variation of the question below on the phone or via email:

• Do you charge bloggers for this service?
• Do you charge a subscription fee to bloggers to included in the LinkyLoveArmy?

As I received this question again last night, I realized that I was over due to write on the blog about it, although I think this is buried in the forum somewhere. 

Many people think that since we are promoting bloggers and sending them lots of incoming links, that we might charge bloggers for that service.  Since we launched our referral commission program last month, many people have also asked if we charge something like a subscription fee to join as well.

The answer to both questions is  a loud no! 

We never charge bloggers.  We want to PAY bloggers to blog, not charge bloggers to be in our program or anything like that. 

Cash Rich Industry

This is a cash rich industry, where companies are expected to pay in advance for their advertising and where we strive to pay our bloggers within 7 days of completing missions.  We don’t even want your interest!

Truth be told, we don’t need bloggers money! 

Challenge to Bloggers and to the Blogging Industry

Our biggest challenge is tailoring missions in ways that bloggers will accept them and do a great job writing creatively about them.  Too many bloggers these days are writing articles that are starting to look and read in a spammy fashion. 

Our goal is to change the industry and swing it back to being creative again.  In the spirit of Brewster’s Millions (Richard Pryor movie from the 80’s~He’s from my hometown.)  We very happily and politely want to pay bloggers to blog, but blog well.  That takes practices and it takes effort and that effort in a capitalist economy should be rewarded with money.

So to wrap things up, we do not charge bloggers anything. 

We do not charge a subscription fee of any kind.  (No fees at all)

We do want bloggers to blog better.

Creativity, Creativity, Creativity, Bloggers Have Creativity

We work everyday trying to find ways to make the missions more exciting, but the purpose for this is not to entice bloggers to write spam, but instead to find the creative direction to take an article that will make that article stand out on their blog and be a great article.  If it doesn’t fit, it doesn’t fit, BUT  I’d challenge all bloggers to look at each mission and try and figure out how to get creative with that mission. 

Many bloggers are not the best journalists.  That is a compliment in many ways as journalism these days is spammier than most of the worst blogs on the internet.  IMHO bloggers provide the most benefit when they are being creative.  I do believe that 2 brains are better than 1, that 5 perspectives are better than 2, and that an army of bloggers can move continents.

Bloggers have the potential to contextualize information, feelings, events, perceptions, issues, reality, and much more.  Putting information through a creative subjective filter is the value that bloggers add to the internet.  We do not have to try and emulate journalists and report “What” but we can deep dive all day long into the “Why” the “How” The “What happened when I tried it” and more.

We can speak to everyday people, because we are everyday people.  We are close to the action, and we have thousands of examples to talk about, situations to explore, what ifs to write about and more.

If you Have a Perspective on Something, Write on it

So if you have a Perspective on Something, write on it.  Find a creative outlet for your perspective.  Use that outlet to develop your writing skills, to develop your creative spirit, and while you are at it, We’ll happily pay you and help you move your online blogging business into the black!

One of our members asked me if they could participate in the Harry Potter Promotion even if they have never read the books.

Here is my reply

Sure you can participate. You can rail against them if you like. You can even attack them and the effort too if you like.

That’s entirely up to you, but could stir up some controversy which you may or may not desire. There is a proven linkbuilding strategy of taking an unpopular stance on a topic in order to drum up attention and links. PayPerPost thrives on the negative attention that TechCrunch provides them as an example.

You can do something extreme like that or anything in between.

There are three things that you should always consider aksing yourself:

1. What do I want to do with my blog?
2. What do my readers want to read?
3. What will the impact of my article or blog be on the rest of the blogosphere?

Those are all rhetorical and you will never ever be able to accurately predict everything, but it can help guide you in how to write a better article that will achieve the goal of bringing you more satisfied readers and possibly more links too!

To ellaborate even more, your participation will still be helping two good charities, it will build out more linkylove and you may earn a little money yourself for your hard work and effort!

So please feel free to participate and help raise $1 million for charity through Harry Potter book sales. You can truly write anything you like in the LinkyLoveArmy when we are supporting a campaign of this nature.  If you attack a cause, that’s fine, but be prepared to defend your position if other bloggers disagree with you.  They may send you a little linkylove in the form of criticism of your article, but hopefully they will at least do you the courtesy of a link back!

If you are looking for a quick light hearted break from blogging this weekend check out the Top 10 Warning Signs of Blogging Addiction .

Here’s Items 2 and 7, you’ll have to drop by the site to see the rest of the list. 

… 

… 

… 

7. You look for Category buttons on the right side of the ATM Kiosk.

…

… 

… 

… 

2. You don’t let your kids play with other kids from the Shady side of town because you’re afraid Google may penalize you for having links to bad neighborhoods.

…

* Got a funny article that you want to share with the troops?  Drop us a line or link and we’ll be glad to share the love.

The LinkyLoveArmy supports the DoFollow movement.  We look forward to promoting our troops in many ways and as our site grows in importance we are completely in agreement that we want to share this with our troops.

We will nuke spam, but good comments that add to our understanding and ability to provide better services are encouraged.

The least we could do is Follow, but we will do so much More!