I’m a crypto blogger and I want to let you all know about a clandestine scam that’s been going on for a long time..

TLDR: half the crypto content you read, watch and listen to is a paid promo and you don’t even know it, because it’s designed that way. Here is how it works, here is how you can tell it’s a paid post, and here is what we can do about it. All below.

Hey all,I’ve been posting here for some time and I love this community. I get a lot of my news from here and I’ve actually made a couple of friends here. I’ve gotten a lot of value from this community and so now I want to give a little back.

Some of you that know me or have seen my posts will know that I generally post on Medium and I have been blogging about crypto for some years now. I took a step up 1 year ago and decided to get a bit more serious with it. Allow me to explain why that has to do with what I am about to tell you.

Since that time, one year ago, I have had several individuals and companies offer to pay me to promote things on my crypto-related blog and I’m talking pretty decent money here too BTW. At least for me anyway. $300 per post, $500 per post, $800 per post, and more, including various pay-per-click offers where whatever I send to the advertiser or client from my blog I get paid per click, and let me tell you this would sometimes amount to tens of thousands dollars.

If I chose to go down that path, I could be a full-time shill-blogger in no time whatsoever earning better money than I earn at my day job, that, I can guarantee you.

But I decided not to. And no this post is not about me virtue signaling how fucking awesome I am. I do have a monetization plan eventually, and it’s all above board and hunky-dory. But that’s not what this is about so I’ll continue..

Let me be perfectly clear too BTW, I am not against sponsored posts. I’m a modern-day free-market crypto capitalist, whatever that means to you. To me, it means I’m good with people making money and monetizing their services, absolutely, go for it so long as what you are doing is not sketchy.

What I am not cool with is when these paid posts are not DISCLOSED. And that is the big fat pink elephant in the room that hardly anyone talks about.

I will tell you right now that I believe 50% or more of the crypto-related content that you read, watch and listen to is a paid shill post and you don’t even know it because it’s designed to look organic.

Yes, I know some of these people have been exposed over the years and there are even exposes’ that have happened right here in r / cc.

It’s fucking scummy and gross!

I’ve even had the CEO of one influencer marketing company tell me when he was trying to woo me over, that he is fine with me not disclosing that their client is paying to sponsor a post when the whole goal of that post is to get as many people to click through to the advertiser’s website. Like I said, gross.

In Australia where I am from sponsored posts must be declared and I believe this is also true for the UK and USA. It’s no different from any other type of advertising, affiliate program, or otherwise in that sense and yet more than half the people doing it are not disclosing it. Probably more for all I know.

If that wasn’t bad enough, on Medium in particular, where I post, and for those that don’t know Medium is like YouTube but for writers and readers. Medium does not actually allow ads or sponsored posts. And yet Medium is filled with just that, sponsored posts and ads.

On Medium you can choose to post as an individual to your own account and followers or you can submit those posts to publications within Medium. There are many publications on Medium and those publications allow this. Now I am not sure if they ALL know its happening 100% of the time because there are simply too many publications and too many posts and bloggers to try to paint them all with the same brush and to be fair I’ve also heard of some submissions being rejected because of these clandestine paid posts, but I can tell you for a FACT that I have had editors of publications (former Medium publications) tell me they know it happens, they can’t really stop it, it’s too hard to prove and so they just shrug their shoulders.

Why would they do this?

Publications both on and off Medium need to eat. There is a lot of work that goes into a publication, they need to attract stories and writers and they need regular and consistent content to feed their followers and subscribers that is how they earn a living. But it’s not just publications. It’s YouTubers, TikTokers, streamers, and more, everyone is doing it and yet more than half are never disclosing it and making it seem as though the content is organic and hence duping their audience into buying or paying for something under false pretences.

I will re-iterate that the issue here is not disclosing that a post is paid for or sponsored, at least on other platforms it is allowed when disclosed, Medium does not allow it full stop.

So why don’t influencers, bloggers, streamers, and others disclose that a post is paid for?

With Medium and platforms that do not allow it, it’s obvious as to why, because the platform does not allow it and so the publisher of the content can get kicked off or banned for doing it and so, of course, they don’t disclose it, that’s easy to understand. That means that not only are they potentially breaking laws but they are also breaking the T&C’s of their chosen platform.

On other platforms such as their own independent blogs, or on Instagram and Twitter for example where it is allowed to promote third party advertisers, I can tell you as a blogger myself, I know EXACTLY why they choose not to disclose [1], they think that it’ll ruin the post, it’ll ruin the content, [2], they think that their followers will run for the hills once they find out that every 2nd post they create is basically a paid post and, [3] some of them just have no idea and that’s no excuse but it’s true, I’ve spoken with people that have no clue that they have to disclose these things.

Now I’m not going to sit here and do a Coffeezilla style expose and tell you who these people are, firstly because I just don’t want the bad Joo-Joo, sorry, that’s not my style, I’m not the call-out guy. Secondly, there are just too many of them. If I had to guess I would say that there are tens of thousands of paid content producers that never disclose what they are promoting.

I am just telling you it’s happening, it’s been happening and I’ll even show you how you can usually tell it’s happening below.

So how can you tell if a post that you are reading, watching, or listening to is a paid post?

Now these methods are never going to be concrete because of the very nature of the Internet, anyone can post a link anywhere, here you go, just like that, doesn’t mean I am sponsored by Crypto.com but I’ll continue.

Look at the link itself. Many times these links will be tracking links from the advertiser or third party agency and it might look something like this: crypto.com/ad/tracker/dbhd83bdjo93t39udnndoiuet90e The same goes for affiliate links, these also need to be disclosed and they will look similar to the above because Amazon is one of the most popular affiliate marketing platforms, I’ll use them as an example: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00J38A73A/?tag=097-20&ascsubtag=v7_1_3_2q15_5j5w_0_x01_-srt1- (they will not always use the word affiliate in a referral link, advertisers will use words like track, tracker, aff, ref, etc.) Look for hidden disclosure statements. Usually, these will be written in tiny grey text so that it makes it hard to see and read. What the content creator is trying to do here is defend themselves from future accusations of non-disclosure or prevent them from happening in the first place, many different nations have different rules but most state something along the lines of ‘Disclosures must be clear’ and usually that means at the start of the video or audio or start of a post and if it’s on a platform that uses hashtags there are now appropriate hashtags that need to be used such as #ad. Are there other influencers pushing the same message? If you see multiple influencers on whatever platform it is that you use all pushing a similar message and now you see your favorite content creator pushing the same message but without disclosure, probably there is a chance it’s a paid post. Don’t confuse this with community marketing blitzes though. Usually, projects and their communities will do marketing blitzes and many will just copy-paste the same message, this type of thing does not fall under the same rules because many times these are organic non-paid community members just wanting to pump their coin, project, or whatever and no one is being paid to do so, although I’m pretty sure there are other rules around these actions too but that is for another time. Sniff test. Sometimes there is just no good way to tell just by looking at links and things and the post can be created in such a clever way that it is really difficult to tell, but ask yourself, what does your gut tell you? If the content producer never talks about a particular product or service, if the language used is off or not organic, and not the way that the content producer would normally communicate, these are all clues something probably isn’t right and there’s a good chance you’re being duped into believing this is an organic post when it’s not. Just ask. Reach out and ask or ask directly in the post comments. ‘Is this a paid or sponsored post’? Or send a message or email asking ‘how much do you charge for a paid or sponsored post and will you disclose it?’. You would be surprised how open and honest some people are.

NOTE: Sometimes advertising disclosure is not required;

I’m in Australia and here our rules state the following:

The Code provides that the only time advertising disclosure is not required is when there is no contracted engagement or the brand has no input or control over the influencer content or outcome. Even in those cases, the Code confirms that it is best practice to include reasonable disclosure in the content, such as #FreeGift.

So in essence, kind of like what I did above with the link to Crypto.com there is no contract there, I just decided I wanted to link to them and they had no say in what I wrote but if one of you decided to follow the link and sign up, well, that’s just how the Internet works.

The way forward?

For starters, platforms like Medium need to allow it. Writers on Medium earn fuck-all, believe me, I am one of them. I bring in a ton of traffic and am not compensated fairly at all. I think my best month on Medium was like $13. If Medium and other similar platforms allowed promoted posts they could probably hire a team to better police it or even offer to get involved somehow and manage the process. Whenever something is banned, illegal or not allowed it only pushes it underground.

Education. Platforms should try to educate content creators better. Honestly, I am not a lawyer and even for me it gets a little wild sometimes trying to stay on top of all this and so that is why I choose not to do it.

Long-term partnerships. if you’re an advertiser that is reading this. You guys need to start seeking out content creators that you gel easily with and seek to create a long-term sponsorship partnership. This eases the monetization stress on content creators, especially new and up-and-coming ones that are hustling for a dollar, and that means it’ll lessen the addiction to fast money and means they can focus on creating great daily content that brings in high-quality consumers that they forward onto you, and they can be totally open about it because it’s now a partnership and not some fly-by-night deal. The end goal should be, similar to podcasts where the podcast host will usually plug the sponsor’s product at the star or middle of the cast.

Platforms need to offer content creators better monetization options and offer revenue share. This in itself would reduce the need for shilly-paid posts. The way I see it, these user-generated content sites and apps are making a killing off of the content that their users are creating and they give not much back in return. It only seems fair. Some platforms are heading this way. I know Twitter is now offering a paid newsletter service called Revue and Facebook is also doing more with their Revenue share platform.

That’s all folks. I hope you got something out of this. I’d love for you to check out my rants, crypto circle jerk satire, and interviews over at my blog here. I hope we all see less sneaky paid promotions and more open and honest content from creators. If you’re a creator and you are reading this, I know the money is good but you’re going to ruin all you’re hard work when you get called a shill or worse get busted and funded. We all gotta eat but let’s try to be honest about it.