• Fortune, Friday, March 7, 2008 10:45 AM

Should information be shared for the common good or for wealth? That is the user-generated content question. As blogs and blog networks accrue more advertising dollars, the question of integrity inevitably arises. If bloggers depend on advertisers for a living, how can we be sure those products and services they recommend aren't somehow influenced or manipulated by advertisers?

An interesting new freelance blogging service called Associated Content addresses that problem (somewhat), through a revenue-sharing plan with its community of independent writers. Associated distributes their content through a network, paying them upfront based on the potential popularity of their submissions (which Fortune says is determined by using a "Google-like algorithm") and then sharing the revenue their piece generates. The idea is to separate writers from the content sites for which they write.

But we're talking pretty about pretty small numbers, here--at least so far. Associated says upfront fees usually run between $4 and $20. Contributors are paid a $1.50 CPM for every 600-word article they produce. Associated then distributes the content directly to Web sites in its network and on its own site. So far, the content distributor has published $380,000 articles, and is adding 1,000 per day.

Read the whole story at Fortune »