Sponsored Blog Posts - Inbound links harm ranking?

[5Gates]

Here There

We have been contacting, a view online travel blogs lately if they are happy todo a sponsored blog post for us. Including a least one "dofollow" link within the post to our website.

Our website: www.rapturecamps.com

Blogs which have done a post about us:

http://www.adventureinyou.com/10-best-surf-spots-in-bali/

http://thetravelhack.com/portugal/surfing-in-ericeira-portugal-with-rapturecamps/

Just wanted to double check with the Pro's here if that could harm our ranking? As i have a slight feeling it did actually, i cant proof it fully do.

I hope i can get some answer here, these blogs are with good quality content, have a good PR and do allot of good blog posts. So i thought this should be only good for us.

[MickEdwards]

"sponsored" = paid for.  Therefore if you don't want to break G's webmaster terms any links must be no-follow.  But taking look at the first one you wouldn't tell straight away it's sponsored.  But now you have posted here and told Google

[5Gates]

Yeah i have though about it in more detail as well. I mean i understand that link farming is not the way to go. But there are allot of persons out there having there own blog. We also had allot of past customers wrote a blog post about there experience with us which we cant really control. They have putted a link into there post, so how would google know which post is paid for which not. Of course you would always need to work together with legit hight quality blogs to secure your interested and getting onto spamming blogs.