Ad notice

I have been getting requests from some advertisers to include paid links in the text of posts. I will probably decide to accept at some point.

I have many times turned down requests to do silently paid posts--that is, a post paid for by some advertiser, but without notice to readers, so that it looks like any other post. I don't ever want there to be confusion between paid content and the things I write just because I feel like writing them.

The integrated links, though, are a slightly different proposition. I wouldn't go out of my way to write a post, or change how it would get written, just to include a paid link. But what these advertisers usually want links from is common words and phrases like "poker" or "online poker." Where I would be writing those things anyway, I don't feel like there is any compromise of integrity to put a link in. I think it will be quite obvious when a link is paid, because it will go to a commercial site, one that is not clearly being discussed in what I'm writing about. I.e., the fact that it's kind of an oddball link, only tangentially related to the post, should practically scream that it's paid, even if there is no explicit label as such. At least I think I can do it fairly easily; I'm not completely sure because to date I have just ignored such requests, rather than explore the details of how they want it to work. We'll see.

So now you know, in case such things start popping up here and there.