I received an email requesting me to remove a sponsored post immediately from my blog (not this one) that was just slapped with a PR4->PR2 demotion. It was a strange requests. Of course I have already been paid for the sponsored post a couple of months back. What’s more curious was that I was offered USD 100 for that removal. I think that post only paid USD 8 to write but now they are paying USD 100 to remove it? Of course, I don’t quite believe this but promptly removed it to see if they’d really pay the USD 100. I have nothing to lose deleting an old post and it was as easy as clicking the delete button. The email address looked genuine and they knew details like the ad index number. I didn’t doubt the email and it is unlikely to be fake.

If this is true, this is a worrying new development for paid posts companies. Advertisers are running helter skelter and moving away from paid post ad agencies. When Google penalises the blogs that write the sponsored posts, Google can easily follow the links back to the ADVERTISERS that paid for it. A hundred is a lot to pay just for removal of a post. It is the sign of desperation and panic.

Is Google going to penalise the Advertisers as well?