I'd long suspected this to be the case, but apparently, not all product mentions are created equally. For the record, the only corporate 'donations' to this blog's proprietors are - a box of chocolate bars from Blommers, and a t-shirt from Fat Tire Ale.
Credibility is the main issue, of course.
Advertising Age - Want to Build Up Blog Buzz? Start Writing Checks for $8
Over the course of one month, Lynn Terry watched her PayPal account balloon to nearly $500 for simply blogging.“It's the easiest money I've ever made,” Ms. Terry said. But to earn it, she couldn't just write about her life as a single mother of two living in Tennessee. She had to essentially shill for advertisers, from Epson inkjet printers to the software product Camtasia.
In that month, Ms. Terry took 55 “opps” (opportunities) for an average of $8 each via the website PayPerPost.com, defined by its 30-year-old founder and CEO Ted Murphy as the “consumer-generated advertising network.” By Ms. Terry's math, if she expanded to five active blogs and took the maximum three opps per day, her monthly take would jump to nearly $3,600, or $43,200 a year. “That's a full-time income,” she added enthusiastically.
...Mr. Murphy's outfit, based in Orlando, Fla., makes its money by paying an $5 fee per opp placed on the site, or a listing fee; the site makes 25% for every opp a blogger takes. Mr. Murphy declined to disclose revenues but said: “We are doing great,” before laughing heartily. The company has raised $3 million in venture-capital funds.
Certainly PayPerPost is paving new ground, but the question is whether it is distinctly different from P&G paying a novelist to include references to its Cover Girl products or Coca-Cola paying “American Idol” to get Paula Abdul to sip from a Coke-branded cup during a show. Of course, it's done by everyday people. And then there's the thorny issue of disclosure.
“This could undermine the entire social fabric of social networks,” said Patrick Rooney, president of Expand Communications, a word-of-mouth-marketing firm in Chicago, whose clients include Sony Ericsson and Sergeant's Pet Care Products. “While people are reading blogs, will they begin to question the truth about what is written?” Mr. Rooney plans to advise his clients against using PayPerPost. “Paying for reviews will certainly come back to bite you in the butt because it will get out that you did.”
...
“It's kind of a funny issue,” Ms. Terry said, before admitting she does not disclose every post and often will cloak her affiliate links. “You get a higher conversion rate,” she said. “It just confuses people who are not familiar with it.” (Some PayPerPost bloggers are using the abbreviation PPP to tip off readers.)“We are betting on the ethics and morals of the bloggers themselves,” Mr. Murphy said. “If someone really hates a product, to make $5, will they say something positive? It really comes down to the blogger being honest with its audience.”
Sensitive to the criticism on disclosure, though, he's developed DisclosurePolicy.org to give bloggers an easy tool to integrate a disclosure policy into their blogs. A blue graphic or “badge” with a check box and the words “I disclose” can be downloaded that links to a disclosure policy generated easily on the site, such as: “This blog is a sponsored blog created or supported by a company, organization or group of organizations.”
Ironically, to get the 6,000 bloggers on PayPerPost to use it, Mr. Murphy plans on paying $10 to each to adopt it.
If you knew certain sites were just poorly disguised advertising blurbs, why would you visit? Unless the topics were things that already interested you, I suppose, but even then, I'd be a little skeptical as to the long term success of such a venture.
Tags: Advertising, /blogosphere, /Business
