Rocket Internet Startup Paying Bloggers to Publish Content in their favor
Rocket Internet is one of the biggest Digital Company which has a lot of online market share of Pakistan. Rocket Internet came into lime light for general public when they started projects like Azmalo, Lamudi, Carmudi etc
Recently a issue was highlighted by a blogger on his personnel facebook wall that he was being ask to publish content (Paid Content) in favor of Lamudi which is a project of Rocket Internet. Being a blogger in Pakistan is not easy if you want to make blogging your primary earning source. Bloggers dont earn much in Pakistan as compared to Bloggers living in US or Europe. These days there are a lot of bloggers who publishes paid content for the sake of money.
We all know that posting something for money is unethical and against the journalistic norms because you are betraying your readers by publishing what you have been handed over by the Brand or Company. Posting Paid content is against Google TOS and can eventually hurt your SERP and Adsense. Even paid content is more worse for the Brand which is in fact a long debate but its true.
The concept of Blogging in Pakistan is news except some old bloggers which are in business for a decade now but for others its really hard to survive out there because Pakistan is not so advanced in Digital Marketing. My firm believe is that big companies like Rocket Internet should focus on giving ads to blogs so that the user can decide themselves regardless of forcing them to read the paid content which is unethical.
So far there has been no official statement by Rocket Internet regarding the issue but here is the email which was sent by LAMUDI SEO GUY (Lamudi is project of Rocket Internet)
