Here's some food for thought regarding Sponsored Articles / Sponsored Posts for your websites or blogs:
You should decide what types of disreputable advertising that you are going to disallow. For example:
- No adult
- No bitcoin or fake currencies
- No casinos or gambling
- No drugs (both in terms of medications, but the illegal variety too)
At which point you might ask: Why is bitcoin on the list?
It is on the list because it is effectively online gambling. It isn't like you're buying a stock in a company that produces a commodity like a gold mine, silver mine, oil field, or a manufacturer who makes widgets. The cryptocurrency markets are people exchanging fake currencies, not actually buying anything with those currencies, and the computing power to create fake bitcoins / etc comes at the expense of burning coal to make cheap electricity.
Because of these factors, advertising Bitcoin or other fake currencies is a divisive issue, like talking about abortion rights, forcing your religion on others, etc.
So effectively what you want to do is to exercise some "Advertising Censorship" so that you can maintain the reputation of your website, because advertising things like ABCD (adult, bitcoin, casinos, drugs) is going to damage your website's reputation.
Of course, maybe you don't care about your website's reputation so much and just prefer cash... So here's the solution.
Whenever someone asks to advertise something that is in the ABCD category (or something else potentially disreputable) then you need to take that into consideration and charge a different amount.
So for example let's say you have a website with a DA (Domain Authority) of 60.
You should be charging $60 USD per sponsored post on that website. Possibly more if it is a niche topic for something valuable.
But let's pretend that you do allow gambling or bitcoin sponsored posts, then you should jack up the price by 50 to 100%.
So for example you might end up charging $100 USD per gambling post.
The beauty of this is that online gambling companies have lots of money to burn. So they can afford the extra price. Same with any company dealing with Bitcoins or fake currencies. They can afford the higher price.
So whether you choose to take the high road of saying NO to such advertising, or the low road of making a fast buck at the expense of the advertiser's wallet, you should definitely be charging a premium for such advertising or flat out saying NO.
And what to do about those advertisers who get upset at being charged a higher rate?
Just delete their emails. If they don't like it, tough.
And what about adult / drugs?
Because of the way Google works you should avoid doing ANY advertising for drugs or adult topics. Just avoid those topics completely.
