PayPerPost, the controversial blogging service that lets advertisers purchase commentary on blogs, has released a new product called PayPerPost Direct. The new product is a widget that bloggers can add to their blogs that announces their willingness to sell blog posts.
Previously, bloggers perused listings on the PayPerPost website, looking for opportunities to make a few extra dollars. Now, bloggers can set their own minimum price when creating a widget, and let advertisers come to them directly.
This feature subtly shifts the way the company approaches the market. The current system has advertisers paying a set fee per post regardless of the differences in blog size or authority. The result was a low average fee of a $5 or so, which didn’t attract the larger blogs. Now that bloggers can set their own price and engage with advertisers one-on-one, we may see a few of the larger ones begin to use the service. Competitor ReviewMe has a similar approach that pays large blogs more, although the price is based on an algorithm.
PayPerPost keeps 10% of fees generated through the Direct product. Their standard fee on their normal product is a 35% cut.
We’ll wait and see if any of the large blogs adopt this anytime soon. PayPerPost is still deeply flawed – it allows advertisers to demand positive writeups, and they do not require bloggers to disclose within the post itself that it is sponsored text.
Look for a press release later this week. An overview video is available here.
Just signed up with payperpost hope it works!
I signed up a few weeks ago. You need to have high page ranks and alexa rankings to get accepted. Guess I had better keep waiting! hehe
These guys sent me a sleazy email a few days ago:
“Doesn’t it bother you that ReviewMe is taking half of your money? There is no reason why you should lose such a large cut of your proceeds when it is your blog driving the traffic.
On behalf of the gang at PPP I wanted to help you get rid of ReviewMe as the middleman and do it direct with PayPerPost Direct, http://www.payp...rpostdirect.com. PayPerPost Direct would allow you to keep $xx for that post rather than the paltry $xx ReviewMe is paying you.”
Reeks of desperation, doesn’t it?
Mike, its great to see you give airtime without condemning the company even though you disagree with what they currently are doing.
Qikki, at least it was targeted.
I have not used either service btw.
The blogger has full options to decline a positive only post though as shown in the video.
So if an advertiser needs a better review, it’s in their best interest to always request a neutral tone.
I don’t think I’d use PayPerPost, but in the last few days I think I’ve begun to sympathize with what they’re doing. Why? I’ve been reading Jon Batelle’s “The Search” and remembered back to the times when people were slating GoTo/Overture (and even Google later on) for pay-per-click ads in search results.. a lot of people seemed to think it was really unethical and totally against what search engines stood for. That wall toppled, and Google’s pulling in billions a quarter on the back of it. I can’t see PPP doing quite the same, but perhaps they’re just the thought leaders in a controversial area like GoTo/Overture was.
ReviewMe also lets you set the price for your reviews, although you may have to email support and ask them to manually set the price for you.
Thanks for the coverage Michael.
You missed part of why this is so disruptive to the market PPP pioneered — going direct with the PPP transaction widget allows bloggers to go direct with advertisers for a flat 10% transaction fee to coordinate direct negotiation and certified payments. Compare that to a 100% markup by some competitors and it is game-changing for the blogger and the advertiser ROI — why carry any other sponsored blogging widget and give away a 100% markup on what is essentially a direct buy from your blog?
You also mentioned a couple items worth correcting.
The average per-post rate in PPP’s core marketplace isn’t $5, but a multiple of that and growing. This stems partly from PPP’s February launch of segmentation tools allowing sponsors to target scalable campaigns for blogs with specific traffic and influence levels.
Also, PPP’s ‘cut’ of marketplace opps is more like 26%, resulting from PPP’s 35% ‘markup’ — compared to competing ‘cuts’ of 50% resulting from ‘markups’ of 100%.
Again, thanks for the coverage and I can’t wait to see the widget here — I wonder if the widget could even handle all the digits in your offer price
That’s not all true in this post. You can’t get paid from PPP unless you disclosue that the blog posting is a paid opportunity. If you don’t do that you will have your posting rejected and possible ban from using PPP. I’ve used their service a few times and I only take posting that are relatable to my blog. As the blogger you have complete control over what you want to talk about with your postings. For the most part I’m happy with PPP.
@Michael Arrington…why give airtime to a company that you obviously dislike? Last month Google said Paying for reviews/links (see Matt Cutt/Google’s blog) is no logner an acceptable practice (was it ever?)….and they are going to implementing systems to thwart this. I’m curious to see how Google’s new policy will affect PayPerPost. They may go as far as to penalize sites and not just ignore the incoming link reference. This game is just unfolding and now the Godzilla is about to move….will it be Godzilla vs. Bambi?
Personally I liked Michael’s comparison to “statutory rape” in TalkCrunch episode 13.
Andy Beard has written an in-depth review of how PPP Direct changes the sponsored blogging landscape, including function/pricing comparisons more detailed than those I shared above.
It’s also getting some decent Digg love and comments here:
http://digg.com...eview_Landscape
After thinking about the power of the PPP Direct widget here, I ‘d be curious to see how much sponsors would pay for a reference in the ‘thanks sponsors’ posts TechCrunch already writes regularly. Unless the existing ‘thanks sponsors’ posts have already taken Mike’s soul, I don’t see how adding some widget-driven sponsors would. Tone wouldn’t be an issue for sponsors because those posts are usually pretty glowing anyway…
Personally, when I see bloggers that use ReviewMe or PayPerPost, I stop reading their blogs and refuse to link to them.
You have to be a very great fool to give away your reputation for the peanuts they offer.
And marketing bozos at corporations who pay for this nonsense lap it up.
Bereft of the skills necessary to build real buzz, they pay someone else to do a poor job of marketing their product. Shame and mockery are our most powerful tools here.
pay per post sucks.
case in point. i’m trying to research the new flexible soled running shoes that nike has just come out with that mimic running barefoot and my primary resource are bloggers who have tried them out. essentially, the well-being of my knees and ankles might depend on how honest these bloggers are. i think it’s a real shame that bloggers aren’t required to disclose that what they post is pay per post sponsored, and in general, what pay per post is doing is horribly sketchy.
How much is your soul worth when you post the ‘thanks to sponger’ page every now and then? It is not necessary as all your sponsors are linked on your page but you still send a reminder to everyone and it the companies you thank get sent over to 350K RSS feeds as well. So yea Mike I smell BS!
Ok, I posted my full opinion on this over on Cn:
http://www.cent...s-direct-option
To summarize my points:
1. why use this when you could sell the reviews yourself and not lose even the 10%?
2. for most bloggers, this won’t work. They don’t have the right type of traffic to make this work.
3. i want to see a paid advertorial company launch. everyone does paid advertorials today including Mike.
4. come to Cn to read the rest
This post has been brought to you by the letter P and the number 3.
PayPerPost on big blogs? You ought to be kidding me.
Maybe small blogs like mine would take PPP.
I don’t see a long future for this company.
When PPP first opened I used them on a “throw away” blog… I made $250 in a little over 3 weeks. While the money was very nice indeed, I felt too dirty about the entire thing to continue doing it. It’s a shame I have a conscious.
This is an interesting idea. I can’t wait to see if they make it or not. It’ll be fun to watch.
re: “VC Dan wrote: a flat 10% transaction fee to coordinate direct negotiation and certified payments”
This is a nice and disruptive business model that makes sense to me. The market may not play out they way any of us would guess, but this idea has a legs.
The question is, can they use quick market share as a barrier to entry or come up with some value beyond the base idea. And with Google buying FeedBurner, you wil not be safe sitting still.
Paid postings are now a fact of life. Use it or get over it.
It depends from the byer…
I like this new feature in PayPerPost.
MUHAHAHAHAHA YES COME TO MY PRETTIES WITH EACH POST A NEW SOUL!#!@
Will you please shut up about PayPerPost already?
For a company you despise, you really give them so much attention. Nobody would know about them if it weren’t for you
Interesting that there is nothing bad said about reviewme – oh wait, thats cuz its owned by a techcrunch advertiser
And #25 Dude – he can’t shutup – this is what brings the eyes!
It’s like lohan and a car wreck – everyone wants to report on it because its hot
God I hate these spammers…
…
FYI… we should have our Payperpost suppression in the next version of Spinn3r … we manually block them in a number of places now but I don’t want it to always be a war of attrition.
“Controversial” is the magic word, isn’t it?
While paid posts like these blur or even cross the “blog ethics” line, I think a more suitable (and/or perhaps ethical) approach would be to sell text links relevant to each post. While I’m not sure if text-link-ads or similar services offer this feature (text link on individual relevant post), I am using WP Text Ads (www.wptextads.com) that offers such a feature. Best bit is I don’t even need to pay anyone commissions.
On another note, Pay Per Post and similar services might be frowned upon by search engines if they were passed off as regular (non-sponsored) posts or done so for the purpose of juicing up search engine rankings… Same goes for text links so it’s just a matter of method and ethics.
[..]TechCrunch patently have a vendetta against PayPerPost, with the writers over there constantly acting like jilted teenagers. That article is so full of non-stop lies, propaganda and hypocrisy, it’s hard to see how they could publish such drivel.[..]
Not to be all PPP-friendly or anything, but PayPerPost actually *DOES* require disclosure http://payperpo...om/page/blogger. The blogger in question has to say that this is a post purchased by an advertiser. In fact, FTC guidelines on word-of-mouth marketing demand that those relationships be disclosed.
As long as there is full disclosure that the review is paid, then I see nothing wrong with either review me or pay per post.
However, I do think the writer should note the paid status at the beginning he as well as at the end of the article.
Whenever I read a review or commentary and see that tiny text at the end saying that the post is paid, I do feel somewhat duped, and I’m less likely to trust that author in the future.
I also believe we are at the precipice of a whole slew of new “linkvertising” opportunities, is the line between content and advertising continues to blur
Obviously, you have no clue what PPP is all about. You trash it, but you don’t know the simplest thing, which is that they DO require each and every post to be disclosed as paid.
BTW, some of us actually do use the products or services that we write ads for, and are not just blogging for dollars with no authority. That’s OK though, you keep giving PPP the free advertising.
I guess mine’s worth about $35
For the last week I’ve been using PPP, ReviewMe and CreamAid as a case-study for our merchants. The advertiser experience is very different for all of them. Often times frustrating – but I believe they’re all here to stay. I wrote a blog post today.
http://www.merc...amaid-what.html