One of the UK’s top independent blogging networks has hit out at the Huffington Post’s entry into the UK market and told bloggers not to blog for free for the AOL site which it argues does not value its bloggers despite being valued at more than £315m after its sale.

The call was made by MessageSpace which sells advertising on behalf of some of the UK’s leading political and news blogs including Guido Fawkes, LibDem Blogs, Liberal Vision, Harry’s Place, Political Scrapbook, Total Politics  and UK Polling Report.

MessageSpace, which was founded by Guido Fawkes aka Paul Staines and Labour web strategist Jag Singh, has been selling advertising on behalf of Britain’s leading political blogs since starting out in 2006 with just six blogs. It now represent some thirty different websites drawn from across the political spectrum.

Unlike the Huffington Post, which pays its bloggers nothing, MessageSpace pays the blogs in its network by selling advertising space and other services. And since being set up five years ago it has paid out hundreds of thousands of pounds to its partner blog publishers.

It recently upgraded its service and is now looking to expand the MessageSpace network from the current thirty news and current affairs websites towards a target of three hundred sites on the network.

To achieve this expansion it has reduced the minimum daily traffic threshold before which it will consider a website from 10,000 page views a day to 1,000 page views a day.

The Huffington Post launched in the UK in the Summer after its sale to AOL for $315m earlier this year.