Buying and Selling Trust

If you have ever flown United Airlines you have probably seen the Hemispheres magazine. Usually I only look at it to see what movies are playing on the flight or if I need a quick map of the airport but in the newest issue there is a lengthy article about 'mommy' bloggers and how they are complete sell outs. You can read the whole article online here. Basically the article talks about how these mommy bloggers have earned the trust of their readers then get paid to pitch them products... and no disclosure that they are getting paid to do so. These mommy bloggers have earned trust with their readers and these companies want to buy it. If there is one thing I have learned in my many years in marketing its that wherever there is trust, there is someone willing to buy it. Ted Murphy, CEO of Izea, Pay-Per-Post, and Sponsored Tweets provides a platform for people to sell some of their trust. Essentially he is a trust broker. He will allow companies to buy some of your trust with your readers on your blog or your followers via twitter & Facebook. I have made a decent amount of money doing sponsored posts and tweets. I even made some money arbitraging other people's trust, taking money from companies and paying people on twitter to say what the company wanted said about their products. In 2003 buying Google's trust (people thought they were clicking on search results when they were actually purchased ads) in their search results was an amazing time for marketers... but it quickly got saturated. The same opportunity existed with Yahoo's and Microsoft's search platforms when they launched. Google also provided one of the easiest methods for a website to sell its trust with its users.... via the Google AdSense content network. Google provided a dead simple way for a user to get paid pennies per click for trust they had built up with their readers, all without any editorial control of the ads being displayed on their website. In a sense Google was one of the first mainstream brokers of "trust". I go over in great detail the negatives of using Google AdSense in the ShoeMoney System (video still free here). As a purchaser of trust I can tell you that currently the social space is by far where we are getting the biggest bang for the buck right now... and probably will be for a long while. Paying a to 10 digger to get a story to the front page of digg is extremely cheap compared to the results. Paying twitter users on sponsored tweets to say whatever you want them to say about your product for as low as 5 cents per click is an amazing investment. In the ShoeMoney System we also take you step by step through how to make money with Sponsored Tweets. Ways to find the best people to purchase tweets from and get the most bang for your buck (as well as demonstrate live how to make a few hundred dollars a day). Sponsored Tweets has also agreed to give ShoeMoney System users up to $1,000.00 in free tweets. We also have free money from FaceBook, Google, Microsoft, AOL and others... But more on that later... So how much is your trust worth? I personally feel its possible to sell trust and still maintain and even grow your trust.