PayPerPost - Scum Update
December 17th, 2006 | Categories: blogs, strategy
I guess all the negative press and FTC threats finally got to the core of PayPerPost. This Monday, they will announce a new policy making payment disclosure mandatory.
Although this is a step in the right direction, I still strongly disagree with many aspects of their business model. For one, payment disclosure does not need to be contained within the actual post itself (although this is encouraged), but displayed prominently somewhere on the blog.
In addition, advertisers may still require a positive write-up. Finally, advertisers pay a given price no matter the popularity (or lack thereof) of a blog, which makes no sense to me whatsoever.
Nonetheless, kudos to this bottom-feeder for trying to move toward a more ethical business model. They still have a long way to go though…
For more info on the story, visit Mathew Ingram’s blog or Scobleizer.
December 17th, 2006 at 9:36 pm
I’ve just been reading John Chow’s post on the same subject
http://www.johnchow.com/most-profitable-ad-network-for-a-low-traffic-blog/
basically the highlight is that at really low traffic levels, you could have eCPM of $270. That’s insane.
Though since noone will see the post anyways, it’s really more along the lines of TLA’s textlink ad, with a bunch of “positive” keywords thrown around the link.
My point is that in such a case, the disclose of getting paid will have absolutly no change on the economics of low-traffic PayPerPost publishes, since more utility is extracted from search crawlers (on a low PR site? can someone explain) than from ~100 daily hits across the domain.
December 17th, 2006 at 11:47 pm
Hey Tony,
I totally agree. It’s ridiculous to me. I think that ReviewMe has done a much better job of creating a marketplace for bloggers and advertisers. ReviewMe uses an algorithm based on stats from Alexa, Technorati, and other sources to determine the price per post on a specific blog - a much more sophisticated and intelligent system.
I just feel bad for the companies that pay Joe Blow with a Blogger account, who gets 3 page views a week…
Cheers,
Aidan
December 18th, 2006 at 9:06 am
Indeed. Though those stats are exactly why I wasn’t let into ReviewMe.. not enough backlinks yet. Though such level of exclusive networks is very respectable, it ensures a certain level of baseline quality.
There was a bug with ReviewMe where it would check the PR of the top-level domain, not of the blog’s actual page, meaning that Joe Blow gets an instant PR of 10 because he’s hosted with Blogger.
(and on the same account, spaces.live.com holds a #1 Technorati spot)
I’m wondering if that is still an issue.
December 18th, 2006 at 11:39 pm
I agree that ReviewMe is a lot better service than PayPerPost. The only the only review I have ever been paid for was my review of Review me where I compared ReviewMe to PayPerPost.
http://www.sandbergventures.com/blog/2006/11/10/review-me-launches/
I think PayPerPost just encourages splogs.
December 19th, 2006 at 12:49 am
Tony -
My personal take on the situation: I will never accept payment for a post. I think it goes against all principles of blogging - even if disclosure is provided. A post should be written because the author feels the need to express an opinion or present a piece of news - not because of monetary compensation.
PS. I do hope they fixed those bugs
Chris -
I agree. ReviewMe is much better than PayPerPost - the latter falls under the category of ’sleaze’.
Cheers,
Aidan