When I was in college I was offered a job blogging. Cool. Right?

I thought so too until I found out that the company wanted me to blog about their clients products and how fabulous they are. And while I’m all for evangelizing the stuff I like, I think it’s crooked when people get paid to talk about said stuff. It’s a little something I like to call conflict-of-interest.

I turned down the job because, while I like blogging and money, I do not like to get paid money to sway what I blog about.

And it turns out that the FTC feels the same way. They are now proposing new laws to mandate disclosure of financial relationships between bloggers and products they review.

Read this Phillip Givens Law Blog post to learn more about the proposed FTC changes.

In advance of pending legislation, I’d like to disclose that rather than get paid to write anything on my blog, I, in fact, pay to blog. Between domain registration and hosting, this site costs me about $25/year. I have no paid advertising or sponsorships. How’s that for full disclosure?