There Goes the Sanctity of Independent Blog Reviews
July 5th, 2006 by Mike Reining Read more about ArticlesYou’ve just launched a new product, site or software and now decide you need to get bloggers to blog about your product. How do you introduce your product to bloggers?
New service PayPerPost.com suggests you bribe them. With PayPerPost you can now offer bloggers payments of around $5 each to blog about your new site.
We think it’s a stupid, stupid idea.
Buying ads on blogs is fine. A blog reader can clearly tell the difference between an ad and a post. Many blogs like BoingBoing.com and LifeHacker.com make decent money selling ads.
But encouraging bloggers to disguise your ad as a post? That’s idiotic.
Firstly, if you’re using a service like PayPerPost.com to pay for publicity, you’re only going to attract amateur bloggers. The bigger bloggers are not going to blog about you for $5. That’s precisely why they are big-time bloggers. They understand that their audience trusts them and wouldn’t violate this trust and editorial integrity by disguising an ad as a post.
So all you get are a bunch of amateurs writing about your new site. That $5 will likely bring you little traffic. We’d suggest your money is better spent on Google Adwords — or on a Venti Mocha from Starbucks so you can stay awake a little longer and think up more intelligent ways to market you site.
CNET’s Rafe Needleman doen’t mince words on PayPerPost:
“This is a bad, bad, bad thing. It’s hard enough for bloggers and professional journalists to maintain their integrity as it is. Even an unsubstantiated rumor of impropriety can destroy a writer. And PayPerPost casts a pall of doubt over everybody.”
So what does this new service look like?
Here’s what it looks like if you log in as a Blogger. Right now, you have around 2 dozen or so articles to write about. From Trading Spouses to BubbleWrap. (Ahh Bubble Wrap! — that ever popular blog topic that people just can’t seem to get enough of.)
Most good bloggers would not decimate the sanctity of their blog by writing about something irrevelant and pointless for a mere $5.
Those Bloggers that are willing to do so — probably don’t have a decent Blog audience anyway. Heck, if you’re willing to blog about Bubble Wrap for $5, you don’t deserve a blog audience.
Here’s what the advertiser login looks like
Don’t you love how they first demand a credit card and then money before you even get to Step 3. And then they label Step 3 as “Create an Opportunity for Bloggers”.
The fake altruism also made me laugh (and cringe). Create an Opportunity for Bloggers? You create opportunities for orphans, for flood victims, for the homeless — but you aren’t creating opportunities for bloggers by bribing them to blog about your service.
There are some great tools and services out there to help bloggers make money off their blogs, like Tracksy, Adbrite or Clickmuse (which we’re launching soon). But PayPerBlog is clearly not one of them.
So how do you get bloggers to write about your product? We’ll cover this in a post next week.
Thoughts? Are we being too harsh? Does anyone see any potential in a service like this? Add your comments.
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About the Author
Prior to MindValley Media, Mike was the Head of New Ventures Strategy at eBay where he conceived of the strategies that led to the investment in Craigslist, the launch of Kijiji.com and the acquisition of Skype.
Mike has an MBA from Stanford and previously worked for the Boston Consulting Group. He is also a certified Google AdWords Professional.
Check out other posts by Mike Reining
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Vishen Lakhiani
I had made a bet with myself after the 2nd paragraph that you had some competing service. I then chided myself for being so cynical. I guess I was right the first time.
Actually we don’t have a competing service. Don’t know where you got that idea.
When we say we’ll share tips in our next post we mean we’re going to talk about how we contact bloggers for reviews of books. This is not a service…we’re just sharing tips on how we do it so we get honest reviews like this:
http://www.webmetricsguru.com/2006/07/the_mindvalley_way_to_ecommerc.html
Hi Vishen,
I don’t think your opinion is harsh, but if it is by anyone’s judgment, it’s the harsh truth.
While $5.00 is relatively little, it’s as good as money gone in the case of bribing others to write about you i.e. PayPerPost.
Yes, the same $5.00 would’ve been better invested in other forms of advertising, PPC and newsletter advertising just to name some. At least, you can expect a much decent return.
Edmund Loh