Meet the Newest Member of the 1-800-Bakery.com Family

While doing some routine cleanup behind La Patisserie yesterday, we were surprised to find that someone had taken up residence in the small patch of land outside our back door.

We haven't given her a name yet, but she's the mother to 10 healthy looking eggs, and she's become quite the source of fascination for everyone here.

It's unusual for a duck to nest in an area like this. The closest body of water is a very small river that's across two parking lots. On the plus side, stray dogs are rare in town, so the only enemies she needs to worry about are a handful of squirrels and curious middle school students who cut through the parking lot on their way home.

She's shown no interest in the potato chips that someone offered her, but she has been wolfing down any bit of La Patisserie bread that we offer (a sure sign that she's a duck of excellent taste!).

This second shot shows just how close she is to the kitchen entrance at the bakery. She's about halfway between the bakery and the sidewalk that runs in front of the parking lot. Despite the tall weeds being gone, she's still camoflauged enough that most of the people who walk by don't notice her.

We don't know how long she's been there, or when her eggs will hatch. If anyone out there wants to supply us with some information on the care and feeding of ducks, I'll share it with the bakery staff.

In the meantime, we're all keeping an eye on her and making sure she's not disturbed. I'll keep you up to date on any developments, which I hope will include adorable pictures of duckings.

Cakes Taste Better When You Save

It's that time of year again, when America gets hot and cakes get cranky. They're still tasty and nice to have around, but they don't like being stuck in a delivery van for two days, so they up and melt to show their displeasure.

We like our cakes cake-shaped and unmelted, so as of today, Overnight shipping is the only delivery method available. "Oh no!" you're screaming. "That's too expensive!"

Not if we lower the cost. While everything else is going up, including those gas prices, we're dropping the cost of Overnight shipping throughout the summer to just $19.99--the same price as last year.

This discount will only be in effect until October 1 or so, when second-day air shipping returns.

Flooding on the Plains

Our thoughts go out to the people of Greensburg, Kansas, as they recover from their losses, as well as to everyone affected by the flooding in the Plains States.

This is a big week for sending gifts, but I'd like to remind you to check with people in Kansas, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Oklahoma to make sure they're at home and receiving deliveries before you send something to them. Flooding will close roads in the area, and there are evacuation orders in place along some waterways.

With luck, the waters will recede quickly and leave a minimum of damage in their wake. I'll be keeping an eye on the situation and posting updates to our Delivery Disruptions page as they become available.

Send Mom a Cake

This cake is so beautiful that it makes me want to cry. Just imagine how much Mom will love it, between her sobs of, "Oh, you shouldn't have," and "You're the best [son/daughter--pick one] ever!"

It really is a nice cake, filled with lemon and raspberry preserves, and it's got two dozen candy flowers on it. And you can only get it from us, because other bakeries don't think your Mom deserves two dozen candy flowers. Clearly they've never met your Mother and don't understand what an exceptional person she is.

For $62.95, and that includes shipping, you can send this cake to your Mom. Or you can send it to yourself and bring it to her on May 13.

Or you can get her flowers, just like you did last year and the year before that, which is why your Mom calls it "Floral Obligation Day" instead of "Mother's Day." I've got nothing against flowers, but none of the ones I've tasted are anywhere near the flavor of this cake. You can always give her the cake and flowers, if you must have a bouquet, but I think the cake covers the need for flora.

One's Red. One's German, One Isn't

There are three cakes that generate more requests on our site than anything else. At least they did.

I'm happy to welcome Carousel Cakes to the growing list of 1-800-Bakery.com partners. They've got the three cakes in question, and they're quite delicious.

First, the Red Velvet Cake, good enough to earn recognition as one of Oprah's Favorite Things in O, The Oprah Magazine. Three layers of mild chocolate cake filled and covered in a very, very rich cream-cheese frosting. This will satisfy your sweetest tooth. And in case you're wondering, this cake got its name from a chemical reaction that used to take place with chocolate in the mix, resulting in a red-colored cake. Today's chocolate doesn't do that anymore, but a couple drops of food coloring do the trick.

Next, the Black Forest Cake, which is tough to find because it takes some skill to stabilize whipped cream for shipping. Carousel's done just that, and they deliver two layers of chocolate cake filled with custard and black cherries, covered in whipped cream, and topped with Maraschino cherries. By far, this is America's favorite European import when it comes to cakes, and we're happy to have them on the site.

Finally, the German Chocolate Cake, which isn't German at all, but gets its name from a popular type of Baker's chocolate developed in 1852 by a Mr. Sam German and still available today. As the legend goes, the recipe was submitted to a newspaper in 1957 and America fell in love, with the cakes being made at a furious pace each time the recipe was reprinted, helped along by a very happy General Foods, which was only too eager to keep the Baker's German's Chocolate sales high. Apart from the creamy, mild-chocolate cake, the key ingredients are a buttery mix of pecan and coconut used for filling and topping and a thick fudge icing.

All three cakes are available in a seven-inch size, which gives us some smaller cakes on the site, another popular request. Overnight shipping is the only option on these cakes right now, but we'll have Second-Day Air available once it stops being so hot down South. That would be around October, I believe.

The Return of Rugelach

Kosher Rugelach is back at 1-800-Bakery.com thanks to our new partnership with Connecticut-based Challah Connection. It's yummy, it comes in four flavors, and it arrives in a handsome gift tin suitable for storing nuts and bolts, loose change, or small tchotchkes once the rugelach's gone.

If you don't need the tin, grab the Classics Platter, which includes rugelach and the best Black and White cookies I've ever had. So good that my coworkers had to fight me off to get at them. Plus it comes in a nifty wicker platter suitable for storing cooking utensils or the ever-growing collection of remote controls in your home.

Or you can just get a bunch of the Black and White Cookies in the same handsome tin, which will be useful if you have an abundance of nuts and bolts, loose change, or tchotchkes. Holds sewing notions, too, and you get to enjoy some delicious cookies while you think about what you're going to put in it.

Tin and platter usefulness aside, we're very pleased to have these exceptional foods on our site. We've also added Babka and several gift packages that are ideal for those sitting Shiva, including a complete Kosher Dessert Buffet that serves 50 and includes almost 15 pounds of desserts.

It Is Spring, Right?

It's a bit hard to tell what season it is, what with all the snow around here, but the calendar says April and the flowers shuddering against the snow suggest that warmer weather will soon find its way to us.

While we wait, there's baseball, which means Baseball Cookies are back for your gifting and eating needs. They're here until October, but why not enjoy some now?

If you work in an office, or you know someone who does, don't forget that Administrative Professional's Day is April 25. That's two weeks from Wednesday. We'll be taking second-day air orders for delivery on Administrative Professional's Day (or if you're old school, Secretary's Day) until 2PM Eastern on Monday, April 23, which gives you lots of time to procrastinate and then call us in a last-minute fit.

Stop Cyberbullying, Not Free Speech

I've written enough about good and bad online behavior that I feel compelled to weigh in on the Kathy Sierra situation and the ill-advised "stop blogging until someone does something about this" crusade that's been unleashed on the blogosphere.

For those who don't know, Kathy Sierra is a talented software designer and writer who's become the victim of some truly heinous threats on her blog. She went public about the threats and her fear of them, and that's led some other bloggers to decide to go dark to protest the poor behavior of a few miscreants.

This, of course, is a bad idea. The only thing accomplished by everyone jumping on the Sierra blackout bandwagon is to empower the attention-seeking lowlifes who posted the comments in the first place. From their anonymous accounts, they've now sent a shudder through the blogging community, and they're probably bragging with glee about how powerful they are.

This is why you don't feed trolls. They're like Freddy Krueger. If you ignore them, turn your back on them, you take their power away. If you confront them, you embolden them. It's that simple. Every blog that goes dark just contributes to the aggregate success these self-important idiots now feel.

It gets worse when the news media sums up the campaign by saying, "Fellow bloggers have declared tomorrow 'Stop Cyberbullying Day.' They will suspend their online journals, hoping to focus attention on the dark side of free speech. " The dark side of free speech? Maybe we should do away with this "free speech," seeing as it's so dark and destructive. Maybe David Louie, who penned this repugnant line, ought to go practice his journalism in China, where he'll have much less free speech to worry about.

Yet Mr. Louie is not alone in his opinion. Bloggers and readers are calling for "something to be done." That something is, no matter how you look at it, censorship, and it's worth noting that Ms. Sierra's distress stems not just from comments on her blog, but things posted on other blogs as well, so the scope reaches beyond simply deleting inappropriate comments from one's own blog, which any author is free to do. What's being said by a few is that this sort of behavior, anywhere, on any blog, ought to be stopped.

This is that slippery slope we keep hearing about. I agree that the posts in question have no place in civilized discourse, and that the people behind them should be shunned, banned from posting on other people's blogs, and paid visits by law enforcement if their threats cause undue distress. At the same time, Ms. Sierra needs to understand that she, like all prominent bloggers, is a public figure, and one of the "perks" of being a public figure is having irrational people threaten you, stalk you, and, in extreme cases, attempt to do you harm. There's no shortage of celebrities who have to deal with this. It's the price paid for stepping into the spotlight.

Stalkers are best handled through law enforcement. Cyberbullies are best handled through marginalization and shunning, not any sort of agreed-upon "standards of behavior" that limit free expression. And bloggers serve their purposes best by writing about what's happening and inviting discussion, not by going dark in protest.

Online Ordering Tips

One of the nice things about the Internets is the way it allows e-tailers like us to automate things. Things like copying addresses into our shipping software. This frees up large amounts of valuable time that can be used goofing around on the Webs, say at The 365 Days Project.

The downside to all this automation is that it makes it easier for your orders to get messed up if you don't type them in properly. I've noticed a few bad habits that have crept in over the last few months, and as we prepare to launch a more automated order processing system, I thought I'd share some advice for online shoppers that will help your order get where it belongs, whether you're ordering from us or someone else.

1. Disable the Autofill function on Internet Explorer. It's a security risk, and it has a bad habit of putting information in the wrong places.
2. Never put apartment or suite information on the same line as the street address. Use "Address 1" or "Street" fields for the street and number, and use "Address 2" or "Apt." fields for Apartment, Suite, Floor, Building, or Internal Routing numbers. If you put them both on the same line, the second part of the address could be cut off when it gets sent to the shipping software, or devoured by the program that translates the Web data to the proper format for the shipping software. Either way, you've got a package going to an apartment and no apartment number, so it doesn't arrive on time.
3. Always include the state. Yes, some of us have fancy softwares that fill in the state based on the ZIP Code. Some of us don't have those fancy softwares. Some data-conversion programs throw out any address that doesn't include the state, because that's read as missing or incomplete data. Your order doesn't get shipped on time when this happens.
4. Always provide a daytime phone number where you can be reached. While I wouldn't recommend this for every site, at 1-800-Bakery.com, we only use them if we have a question about your order or if there's a delivery problem. In 9 cases out of 10, if we can reach you as soon as we know that UPS or FedEx can't find the address, we can get the package there that day.

Finally, here's an uber-secret tip that skilled shippers know: UPS and FedEx use their discretion when it comes to leaving packages, even if the signature is waived. If the recipient lives in an apartment building with a locked front door, or a house with a locked front gate, the package will not be left behind if it's at street level or in a high-traffic area. A rash of package thefts in an area will also cause our shippers to keep packages on the truck, but this is rare and tends to happen only around Christmas.

In this case, UPS and FedEx will leave a note for the recipient with instructions on how to pick up the package. Almost everything we ship will survive that extra day in transit, but you might wind up missing a birthday or special occasion by a day. If you know the recipient lives somewhere without a safe place to leave a package, try to have it arrive a day early and avoid Friday deliveries of our most perishable items, such as cakes, mousses, and breads.

Advantage: Basket

Before you firm up those Easter gift-giving plans, let me remind you that we're about a week out from the annual admonitions against giving kids bunnies and chicks as Easter presents. I can see the bunnies, but I'm not sure who's giving the chicks, or why they don't understand that these will someday grow up to be chickens, which are far less friendly and fuzzy.

Instead of giving something that will run up a recurring food bill and make a mess of the house, give a nice Easter Basket. They're traditional, they've got loads of tasty candy in them, and some of them even come with plush animals that won't shed or leave things that need cleaning up behind.

And if you order one from our Easter Gifts page between now and the Friday before Easter, you'll be able to get ground shipping for just $5--less than you'd pay for a 25-pound bag of Purina Rabbit Chow. Probably less than you'd pay to feed that chick for a month, not that I know what they eat since Purina doesn't have Chicken Chow, but you know they'll be eating a lot more of it soon when they're not pecking holes in the legs of your chairs.

So, to recap your gift options:

Bunny: Quiet, but sheddy and expensive
Chick: Crows at dawn (if male), leaves eggs around house (if female), pecks when irritated
Basket: Silent, no hidden costs, less risk of household damage (beware of melted chocolate on rug)

I'd say the Easter Basket wins.

Irish This Up for Me

St. Patrick's Day is next Saturday. It falls an hour earlier this year, thanks to that change in Daylight Savings Time that I've already mentioned.

Not what you'd call a major bakery holiday, certainly not on par with Christmas or Valentine's Day, but we do have lots of Irish Soda Bread made by our friend Sean Hurley. It's the closest thing to genuine Irish Soda Bread you'll find on these shores short of importing it from the Emerald Isle, which will take much more than a week, so you won't have it on St. Patrick's Day, and everyone will mock you.

We've also got something brand new to the site this year, Irish Whiskey Cake made with plenty of chocolate chunks, green Maraschino cherries, and Jamieson's Irish Whiskey. I've had many a debate with bartenders over whether it should be spelled "Whisky" or "Whiskey," but either way it goes great with chocolate. And cake. And Maraschino cherries.

We've been selling this cake here at the bakery for several years, and it's always a big seller, so we thought we'd share it with all you nice folks out there in Internets land, so long as you live in the continental United States. It may not be soaked in Jamieson's, but there's a good chance that it can ease the pain come Sunday morning, should Saturday night find you wearing the green into the wee hours.

Are We Saving Yet?

In case you hadn't heard, Daylight Savings Time starts on Sunday, March 11, a good three weeks earlier than it has since 1986. This, we are told by Congress, will unleash hitherto undreamt-of savings for the American people as we frolic in the extra hour of daylight at the end of each day for three glorious additional weeks.

It must have been a very slow day at Congress when they dreamed this up. Now that they can't build useless bridges anymore, they're forced to torment us with time changes to idle away the hours spent stuck in session on Capitol Hill. Anyone who thought about this would recognize two immediate problems:

1. We'll have to turn the lights on when we're getting ready for work in the morning, because it will be dark, even though it was light this week.

2. Computers can't handle this.

That second one is the bugaboo for businesses, such as ours. We won't get a dime in energy savings, because the lights and computers are on in the office anyway, as they are in every office where I've ever worked. What we do get is an IT bill to keep our Calendar working, which, at the moment, it isn't, at least as far as March 12 is concerned.

You see, every computer-driven device sold in North America has an internal clock. This clock has Daylight Savings Time programmed into it, so that it automatically changes on the first Sunday in April. This year, that's happening on the second Sunday in March, and since the computer's clock doesn't know that, someone has to write a bit of code to tell it what time it is.

The server that runs 1-800-Bakery.com also needs the script to make our Calendar work and enforce the 2PM Eastern Time order cutoff. Unfortunately for us, the new daylight savings time script and the Calendar aren't getting along too well, so the Calendar thinks that you can have cakes delivered on March 12. You can't, because the cakes would melt in the back of the delivery truck over the weekend. Our server doesn't know that, either, and it wouldn't care anyway, since it's a server and cares little for the fate of cake.

As a result, I've had to deactivate March 12 as a delivery date, which has the following unpleasant consequences: You can't place an order for March 13 and orders for March 14 have to be shipped Overnight, thanks to the rules of the Calendar. In reality, none of this is true. We can ship on the 13th and the 14th is available at the Second-Day Air rate, but if you want to do that, you'll need to either--

A. Wait until after 2PM Eastern Friday to place your order,
B. Read these instructions on how to place your order for any of the offending days, or
C. Join us in praying that our dev team can fix the problem at their not-insignificant hourly rate, which we wouldn't have to pay if Congress hadn't mucked around with daylight savings time in the first place

You can always call our Customer Service line at 1-800-287-9870 if you're still confused. Call your congressional representatives, too, and thank them for all the extra work they're making for us. At least the sun will be out when the dust settles on Monday.

This Is How We Do It

I won't go into detail about what cookiepots.com did to deserve my wrath. Suffice it to say that they should have known better, assuming they ever had a modicum of education in an American high school or university.

And at the risk of overreacting to something, let me say that I don't like veiled insults to my company handed out by people who have no idea what they're talking about, especially when these same people have already earned my wrath for doing something that they shouldn't have done in the first place.

So in the interests of educating these people, along with the readers here whom I care about and might wonder about this sort of thing, let me pull back the curtain a little on our operations.

We are not "middle men" who take your order and farm it out to the "real" company and then "hope for the best." Anything and everything you order at 1-800-Bakery.com is shipped direct from a bakery that has several years' experience doing this sort of thing, and we're in constant contact with one about any orders that come in. These bakeries have been hand-selected by us for their quality and attention to customer service, and anyone who fails to live up to our standards soon finds themselves gone from the site.

Almost every product ships on one of our account numbers, so any delivery issues get sent straight to us. In many cases, we're able to get packages delivered even when there's an address problem, thanks to our quick responsiveness to these issues and the volume of things that we ship. We're also able to extend availability of certain products (we had King Cakes for almost a week after they were gone from Randazzo's own site) and provide exclusive products (like our Small Chocolate Lover's Cake) thanks to the personal relationships we've built with our partner bakeries.

In short, cookiepots.com, I'll put our customer service and delivery expertise up against yours any day of the week. I also notice that you lack a 100% Satisfaction Guarantee, and that you specifically state that edible gifts are nonrefundable. We stand behind everything we sell. If a customer is disappointed, that customer gets their money back, or a replacement of equal value. It doesn't happen very often, but it does happen. Why don't you stand behind your products the way that we stand behind ours?

Until you're ready to stand behind what you sell, I suggest you keep your comments about how other companies do business to yourselves.

A Question for AOL

Why, AOL, do you insist on blocking the e-mails we send to our customers? Don't you realize that our customers like to receive order confirmations and tracking numbers so that they know the things they ordered have actually shipped?

Why did we go through the process of getting white-listed with you last year, only to have this problem creep up again as soon as the calendar turned to 2007?

And how many other companies' e-mails are you needlessly blocking? Quite a few, from what I've heard from your customers. I hear from rather a lot of them, and I always tell them the same thing: Get rid of AOL, or stop using their e-mail. If they're blocking legitimate, business-related e-mails, who knows what else is getting lost.

If you're unfortunate enough to be stuck with AOL, let me recommend Yahoo!, Hotmail! or Gmail, so you're not wondering whether or not you're getting all of your e-mail. I've got quite a few Gmail invitations I can send out, so drop me a line at derek@1-800-bakery.com if you'd like one.

King Cake Alert

Another tasty image for you to ponder, our Genuine New Orleans King Cake. This is the real deal, baked fresh to order and shipped from Randazzo's Camelia City Bakery, complete with beads, doubloons, and a bag of gourmet coffee.

Want one? Want two? Place the orders now. Due to the high demand for these around Mardi Gras, as of this writing, we'll only be accepting orders until Noon Eastern, February 14. After that, no amount of pleading or bribery will enable me to secure a King Cake for you. They're running out of baking capacity on these, as they're hugely popular again this year. How popular? They're #5 on our Bestsellers list.

I don't know when we'll have them again--Randazzo's took a well-deserved month off after last year's Mardi Gras. I also can't guarantee that we'll have them until the 14th, as a spike in orders might make them unavailable before then. The important phrase here is, "as of this writing."

Remember that you can use our calendar and have your King Cake delivered on the 20th, you just won't be able to order them after next Wednesday. As of this writing.

Welcome, Veronica's Treats!

That interesting creation to the left is a Heart Puzzle Cookie from our newest partner bakery, Veronica's Treats of Middleboro, Massachusetts. It arrives unassembled with instructions on how to put it together to reveal it's hidden shape.

We've actually been working with the great staff at Veronica's since last autumn on our corporate orders, and we're very happy to launch them onto our retail site just in time for Valentine's Day. There's an exceptional level of creativity in the things they make, and they're as delicious as they are different. Along with the Puzzle Heart, we've also got chocolate-covered Heart Brownie Bites and my personal favorite, Brownie Roses, rose-shaped brownies dusted in red sugar. I'm going to ask that you take seconds out of your busy day and click that link to see them. You don't have to buy any, but you'll probably want to.

We've greatly expanded our Valentine's Day selection this year, and there's still a couple of exclusive products here at La Patisserie to come once we've got the finishing touches just right--look for them by this weekend. And since Valentine's Day has the good sense to fall on a Wednesday this year, second-day air delivery will be available on February 14th.

As always, though, I'll caution you to order ahead, as quantities are limited and items will sell out. Valentine's Day tends to be a very last-minute thing for a lot of people, but when you were falling in love with that special someone, did you wait until the last minute? Of course not. Nothing says, "I love you," quite like ordering ahead.

Need a "Little" Christmas?

I should have posted this days ago, assuming I had the ability to rise above my post-Christmas torpor, a consequence of several hundred packages, an allergy to styrofoam peanuts, and perhaps a bit more Harvey's Bristol Cream than most doctors would advise.

Tomorrow or tonight is Twelfth Night, also known as "Little Christmas," depending on which version of the calendar you choose, and may be either the real date of Jesus' birth or the date the Magi arrived in Bethlehem, depending on which version of the story you follow. Everyone seems to agree that January 6 is the Epiphany, but whether that's the date of Jesus' birth or the date he was revealed to man is the subject of a debate that has split the Christian faith into various churches. Even the mighty Wikipedia can't seem to get it straight.

In a more practical sense, the arrival of Epiphany means that Mardi Gras is on the way, and we've got our genuine New Orleans King Cakes back and available for delivery Tuesday through Friday. We'll be adding a smaller size and a four-pack of individual King Cakes, all with a toy baby baked inside, in the next few days.

As we get closer to Mardi Gras, which falls on February 20 this year, the demand for King Cakes will be high. Place your orders early to guarantee delivery. We received so many orders last year that we had to stop taking orders a week before Mardi Gras, as there's only so many hours in a week for baking.

So very, very close

It's been a holiday tradition around here that our Stollen ends December as our top-selling product of the year. Looking at it back at the start of December, I didn't think it stood a chance, as we'd sold so many Chocolate and Vanilla Birthday Cakes.

It managed to eclipse the Vanilla Birthday cake at the start of this week, but I'm sad to report that we're 17 Stollen sales short of unseating the mighty Chocolate Birthday Cake.

Now there are still a few days left in this month, and I know that when people have a taste of Stollen on Christmas morning, they're going to want more, so we're extending our send two and pay shipping for one discount through the end of the year.

And lest you think this is some old Stollen we're trying to get rid of, we sold all but two of this week's batch, and we're making more for our retail store in Winchester, so they're nice and fresh. It's just as delicious on New Year's Day--or as an appetizer or buffet item at those New Year's Eve parties you're planning.

Just 17 Stollen. I'm sure we can do it.

Blogola

Seems I touched a nerve yesterday with the defenders of paid posting in blogs. It's not every day that I get called "small," "bitter," and "mean-spirited," to use the more polite names hurled at me. Apparently some people are fine with selling their integrity, but they don't like it when you call them on it.

And before I go any further here, I'd like to offer an apology to Sandra at the Work at Home Newsletter, who sould not have received one of my comments yesterday. I made a point of not commenting on any blog that clearly labeled its posts as paid. Sandra doesn't flag the individual posts, but she does clearly--and rather eloquently--defend her position in a link in her bio.

I don't agree with her position, nor do I agree with the position put forward by Eric Lituchy, the president of Delightful Deliveries (who shall have his company referred to by its proper name from here on out for taking the time to respond).

They both make the same argument: "Newspaper and magazine writers get paid to write about products and companies, so what's the difference?" Speaking as a former newspaper journalist, managing editor for a regional film magazine, and newspaper owner, I've looked at this issue from more angles than most people, and I can say that there's a world of difference.

Yes, journalists get paid to write about products and services, but they don't get paid by the providers of those products and services. Any journalist in America who took money from a company to write a review would be fired on the spot. Journalists' opinions are not for sale. If they were, newspapers would be nothing but advertising sheets, and nobody would read them. Anyone who's studied journalism knows this, and I count a great many reporters and editors among my friends who would never take a cent for their opinion, because they know that doing so would destroy their credibility.

I'm also a radio host, and this situation calls to mind the payola scandals that surfaced in the 1950s and again in the last two years. Record companies paid disc jockeys to play certain albums, either through cash or gifts, thus unfairly influencing the Top 40 charts. The situation got so out of hand that the Federal Communications Commission got involved, and anyone who works in radio now has to sign an agreement that he or she will not accept any gift or cash payment to play any song or promote any artist.

Pay per post is nothing more than blogola, and I'm hardly alone in my condemnation of it. John Fine at BusinessWeek (a legitimate journalist), summed up the outrage at blogola in a June article entitled, "Polluting the Blogosphere," which features this rather telling quote from PayPerClick.com's Ted Murphy: "You can't believe anything you see or read." There was a time, Mr. Murphy, when you could, and it's people like you that are destroying our faith in the media. Mr. Murphy jumped into the Comments fray over at Naked Conversations, if you'd like to enjoy more of his "wisdom."

Marshall Kirkpatric at TechCrunch puts his opinion succinctly: "TechCrunch does not accept payment for posts." The words of a true journalist.

In the interest of offering some balance, Mark Woodman at inkBlots makes the argument that the blogosphere doesn't have much credibility anyway, so why not have at it? I think that's a bit of a cyncial view, because bloggers have been instrumental in breaking some major news stories to the mainstream press. The bigger question here is why don't we have more credibility? Maybe because people are selling their opinions and not telling their readers about it?

If you disclose the status of paid postings, plainly and clearly, I can almost live with it. If you don't, it's blogola. Either way, wouldn't you be better off seeling some things on eBay? Because while you're making a few bucks a post, you're also showing readers that, as Ted Murphy says, "You can't believe anything you see or read." That devalues your genuine posts, along with the blogosphere in general.

I hope that clarifies my opinion on this in a way that's not too mean-spirited.

As for the accusation that I deliberately went after a competitor, that's true. I make no claims toward being unbiased here--read anything I've written about our products--but I do not, and would not, under any circumstances, allow someone to buy my support in any blogging endeavor.

And to that end, I'd like to quote Mr. Lituchy:

"What I've asked, through PayPerPost, is that bloggers go to our website or be customers in order to write a blog about DelightfulDeliveries.com. I believe this is essential to our post otherwise it would be junk. I've also asked for bloggers to review the site. While they are only paid if the post is postive, bloggers are free to write whatever they like. I think that is were you are missing the point."

I think you just made my point, when you said, "they are only paid if the post is positive." That's the point where ethics get thrown out the window in favor of making a buck, and that's why journalists get paid by newspapers, not advertisers. If you paid equally for a negative review, then there's no problem, so why not start doing that? We run negative reviews on our site, right next to the product descriptions, because we value the honest opinions of our customers. I can't seem to find any reviews on DelightfulDeliveries.

By and large, Mr. Lituchy, you run a good business that's an example for the industry. Why would I chastise you for looking for an innovative way to promote your business? Because you only pay for the good reviews, and that's unethical from a journalist's perspective. You're buying links instead of earning them on merit, and you're contributing to the distrust readers have of the commentary found on blogs, which is bad for the entire blogosphere.

I think your company is above this kind of behavior. You're a category leader in part because you've taken an honest approach on your site and in your promotion, apart from this bit of blogola. My hope is that you'll see this as I and many concerned bloggers and journalists see it, and that you'll also understand that while this may be an easy way to get blog recognition now, it will hurt your ability to have legitimate bloggers write about you in the long run.

Dishonest? You Decide

It's nice when bloggers write about businesses they like. After all, bloggers are impartial, everyday people, right? That makes them worthy of our trust.

Or does it? The folks at Pay Per Post seem to think, with some level of success if their new round of $3 million in venture financing is any indication, that the opinions of bloggers are for sale. Here's how it works: You sign up with them, decide which companies you're willing to blog for, and you get cash, either a single payout or, in some cases, affiliate referral fees.

In other words, MAKE FAST CASH WITH YOUR BLOG!!!!, without all that tedious mucking about in AdSense. immomsdaughter claims to be having a "love affair" with the service. Who can blame her? Where else but in America can your integrity be sold for $4 a post?

I'm afraid my integrity costs a bit more than that, in the sense that no amount of money in the world would ever posess me to write favorably about a company just to make a buck. The concept is a slap in the face at the integrity of bloggers everywhere, but if you happen to feel a twinge of remorse at selling yourself out for less than even beer money, they've got a little disclaimer you can add to your blog to explain that you've sold yourself out for less than beer money.

This came to my attention after a bunch of posts about Delightful Deliveries showed up in the blogosphere, all with the same images. It took me all of two seconds to realize that these people were being duped into becoming marketing shills for some small green.

But hey, it takes time to search out and solicit legitimate blogs and try to get them to write about you, and even if you send them some free samples, you can't control what they write. They might say something negative. Let's bypass all that hard work and risk by bribing Suzy Homemaker with a couple of bucks. She's too stupid to understand what we're doing here, and she's sure to sell out.

More reprehensible behavior from the snake oil salesmen who've found their new footing in the online world. It won't be long before the blogosphere is crammed with useless blogs full of this crap. People in China spend more time clicking on links for a smaller payout.

I'm appalled, and any bloggers out there who respect what little integrity the blogosphere retains should be similarly appalled. It's predatory, dishonest, and despicable, and companies like Despicable Deliveries that utilize this service betray their "anything for a buck" ideals.

Before this gets too far out of hand, let me make two suggestions to the responsible bloggers among us:

1. If you see this stuff on someone's blog, leave a comment asking them if they realize they've sold themselves for a pittance.

2. Google, take action now to filter out any blog results that contain these paid placement posts. You've got parasites feeding off Blogger's success and making it harder for those of us who try to publish legitimate blogs to be found.

Edit: It seems I spoke not soon enough on that last point. Run a search on "Delightful Deliveries" in Google Blog Search, and by the time you hit Page 5, it's almost all spam.