I’ve been wanting to get something off my chest for a while now, but just hadn’t figured out which blog to put it on. I do, after all, get paid to blog on all four blogs these days so whichever one I pick for this subject is bound to get slammed with comments calling me a hypocrite. Should I share the traffic (and the hate), or should I keep it all here where the word “Venom” pretty much warns people what they’re in store for?

Ultimately I decided to explain myself here at EV for one reason and one reason only: it has the highest traffic. With luck, I’ll get this message out to a larger number of people also doing paid blogging and quite possibly someone might just get the point and fix their crappy writing.

So here’s the message to 90% of folks doing paid blogging: You suck.

You suck wind loudly, you suck in ways that words cannot describe. You suck because you believe that you don’t, and most of all you suck because you think people actually care what you have to say about a product, site or service.

They do not.

No matter how the companies that handle the transaction may categorize the tasks assigned to you, the advertisers do NOT believe that your glowing, kiss-ass review of a product or service you haven’t even tried (or won’t use, don’t need or can’t afford) will convince the thirty friends and fellow bloggers — most of whom are also getting paid to write about the same damn site — to suddenly discover a need for whatever it is they’re selling.

And before you go calling me egotistical for saying that you suck, consider this: how freaking egotistical are YOU to believe that some company with the funds to hire umpteen bloggers at $15 a piece wants YOU to take time out of your busy schedule of blogging about what color your baby’s spit-up was today or how adorable it was when your cat’s Christmas tinsel-laced hairball looked like the star of Bethlehem just so you can give your opinion of something you’ve never even tried?!

Advertisers, like the boys that I dated in high school, are only interested in one thing. Thank goodness it’s not the same thing. Advertisers don’t want the key that unlocks your chastity belt, they just want the keywords that will get the entry you write for them to show up high in search queries relevant to their product, site or service.

Keywords, people. That’s what’s in those nifty little links that pay for lattes, that take a dent out of your credit card bills, that allow you to say “I’m earning a living from my blog!” They are also, incidentally, the very reason why Google slashed the PR of blogs that receive compensation for writing those entries. It wasn’t personal: it was just about protecting search results.

But you’ve kept on blogging for hire anyway, haven’t you? You’ve got guts. You don’t care about PR. You’re determined to have a good blog and, by gosh, you’re going to keep reviewing your little heart out no matter what Google says, aren’t you?

Well here’s a tip: STOP SUCKING.

Stop writing reviews that sound like Marketing 101 blurbs. Stop trying to act as salesmen and -women trying to pawn off various products to your readers. Stop it, stop it, STOP IT.

Your first duty is to your readers. Entertain them. Inform them, yes, but entertain them in the process.

Luckily, if you let go of your delusions that your job is to actually review stuff, you can do both in the process.

Remember: advertisers want their stuff to come up in relevant search queries. You can make that happen and entertain your readers at the same time.

Got a paid assignment to write about something difficult like PEO companies? Sure, you could dash off a paragraph about how they act as second employers, essentially, handling the mundane tasks of managing human resources and payrolls that small businesses find so burdensome to deal with.

OR you could write about how the rising cost of health care is crippling Mom & Pop businesses and hamstringing the entrepreneur. How small businesses generate the majority of jobs for younger workers, older workers and women but are often unable to offer their employees health insurance because they don’t take advantage of the group rates they could get through staff leasing.

Which would you prefer to read at someone else’s blog: a dry and uninformed yet glowing one paragraph “review” written by someone who doesn’t, won’t and can’t afford to work with a staff leasing company, or one that might be a bit longer and better researched but explains how doctors lease student nurses as employees but might bill them out as regular nursing care at a higher rate?

Which one really tells your reader more information?

Which one really is more likely to result in a “hit” for the advertiser?

If you can’t figure out that answer, I’ll give you a hint: it’s not your crappy one paragraph review of a service that you don’t even understand, much less have helped your readers to understand, either.

Oh, and while I’m at it, let me just take a swing at those of you who INSIST on marking every one of the entries for which you’ve been compensated as something for which you’ve received dirty lucre. Get off your high horse. If you keep writing as you have been, everyone already knows you’re getting paid for it. So stop underestimating the intelligence of your readers.

Some of you claim it’s “deceitful” to get paid for an entry without labeling it as such. Know what? It’s more deceitful to invite readers to peruse entires in which you’ve invested so little time that they read like advertisements written by 6th graders. It’s more deceitful to write a terse, “just the facts, ma’am” review and take someone’s money in exchange. It’s more deceitful to hold yourself out as a blogger then foist upon your readers nothing but dry, soulless, uninteresting pablum just so you can make a buck.

Your “hey, I’m getting paid to write this” blogs suck.

YOU have the power to change that.

STOP SUCKING.

(Oh, and in case you’re wondering, yes I did get paid to write this review. So there.)