Of course the title is a bit lop-sided, because we’re talking about Robert “I’m flying around the country to blogging conferences” Scoble, but there’s an interesting meme floating around where bloggers seem to have to justify trying to earn a buck by putting up ads.

Quite frankly, I think it takes the whole issue of “disclosure” and “authenticity” to extreme and ludicrous levels. Its as though one loses their status as a “real” blogger the instant you put up Google Adwords, or start selling ad space — as though the purity of your writings takes on a different cast because, well, you’ve got to pay the bills.

PayPerPost and its ilk lies on the same spectrum, but is, in principle, very different.

In those circumstances, you’re literally being paid to write about something — not necessarily dictating the content of your post (either good or bad), but when someone is putting money in your hand to write about that thing … well, regardless of how easy or not you find it to bite the hand that feeds you, no one will know if you’re honestly telling the truth.

[UPDATE: Yes -- even with their new puppet site disclosurepolicy.org, my understanding is you're STILL not required to disclose whether or not you're being paid to shill]

When one takes on advertising, there may be implicit pressure, but because the ad is right there for everyone to see, there’s no hiding who the sponsors of your blog are. When you write something about a competing product / service, OR that product / service OR anything related to that product / service — with the Edel-mart climate we’re living in now — you’re kind of obligated to issue some sort of disclaimer / disclosure notice anyway.

If you don’t … well, folks will notice that. Or, if they’re not, they will. Check out the lively discussion at TechCrunch any time of the day if you doubt me on this.

That’s what I love about the web. It does tend to self-police to an extent (and border on vigilante-ism as well … but that’s a post for another time).

Of course no one likes obtrusive, non-sensical, garish, flash-related ads. But most sensible web masters won’t put anything like that up anyway.

Somewhere in a hallowed document that I’m sure exists is a blogger’s set of rights. Bloggers may not have a right to sultan-like riches some people have enjoyed; but, I think every blogger does have a right to try and at least pay for their hosting and bandwidth costs in an ethical way that they see fit.