There has been some commotion recently concerning bloggers who review products and services for personal gain. I don't really have any set opinion especially if the blogger explains the nature of the deal. I certainly have no plans to profit from this website, I just keep it around in case I want to share something. If a company decides to encourage me by offering a little incentive and I find the project interesting I may feel a little more motivated. The reward might not even be guaranteed, even the chance at a prize might be enough to get me to send a little Google juice along. The hard part is writing the post, and even if I don't qualify for the bonus I would likely leave the link up because after all I would never have written it in the first place if I didn't think the service was worthwhile.

I recently applied for an offer trading link love for a service. It was not a big deal, just a quick blog post telling about something that I thought might be useful. The rules did explain that there were certain qualifications did exist and I didn't really know or care if my application would be accepted. The service, after all, wasn't anything I couldn't do myself. I just thought it was a neat idea.

Much to my surprise I got a rejection letter. It was not a nasty rejection letter but it was a very clear rejection. No thank you for trying, no thank you for noticing we exist, not even a thank you for breathing. Just an explanation of what I am doing wrong here. Well guys, thank you for noticing but I am not really even trying to be an a-lister here. My feelings were not hurt because there was nothing there I was not aware of, but I am certainly not going to send either of my readers over to a website that does not have the decency to say thanks for the link. I am not quite motivated enough to badmouth the company, they were polite about pointing out all my faults after all, but I did find time to take down the link.

Lots and lots of little people can build up a page's rank too, ya know.