Advertise on PPP? Some observations of segmentation

I’ve been writing posts for Payperpost (PPP) and for some of the others. There are a number of problems with the service in my opinion, but what there is could be a gold mine for the people who know how to use PPP well. However, there are some issues that advertisers need to understand:

1. There are some terrible bloggers who just whack out a few words on each post, and between posts to bump up or fill the posts. I won’t claim that they are on blogspot or not, some of them are not. But they are easy to spot… By screening for them in your selection process, you can certainly lessen the ‘wasted’ resources, by choosing higher PR/Alexa/Technorati ratings. PPP does provide enough ways to do that now.

2. So other bloggers will whack out quite a decent post for you, if you provide enough space and information for them to deal with your advertisement. As a blogger, I do try to provide value for money on these postings that I choose for my blog, BUT I don’t really do posts for less than $10. I think many of the other bloggers are slowly coming around to this kind of number, too, as a kind of minimum.

3. Also, I do tend to think that the whole blogging for $ is based on some false assumptions about why people blog. Most people started blogging for free because it’s something that they were interested in doing, some of whom have been very successful either paid or in some other way of remuneration. But the remuneration came because of the passion.

But when advertisers offer money for blog postings, what was done for free and enthusiastically may become more difficult for many bloggers: more rules, more expectations, more trouble, more time…! It’s difficult for advertisers to ‘require’ anything from bloggers because of the lack of binding contracts, employee relations, or even face2face pressure. The tools for requiring certain standards are in fact quite blunt. It’s quite likely that some of the ‘advertisers’ would like to have more compunction behind the offers (as payu2blog tries) in quality, quantity and topic, but …

4. As it is, some of the new rules of PPP have in fact driven away quite a few bloggers, including regulars and newcomers. Many others are posting less frequently for a variety of reasons (though their blogs are still updated regularly). Still others are finding that the higher standards PPP are requiring now benefit their blog tremendously and that money comes from many sources, not just PPP.

The advertisers may come to companies like PPP and find that there are lots of bloggers who potentially would love to blog about their products, but because they don’t have adequate ways to judge bloggers’ skills, may find that they either get lots of crap posts or they don’t get enough offers. This is a real example of how things have improved.

A friend of mine recently advertised twice on PPP, the first time the posts he got were somewhat unsatisfactory. He didn’t invest a lot of cash, but I think there was some disappointment because of the poor quality. I think he felt they didn’t do anything good for his website! The second time he tested the waters after segmentation, he was more satisfied with the results, though I sense that he is still hesitant to use PPP on a broader scale, perhaps because of the nature of his website: it’s education-based.

So the success of a project like PPP rests solely on getting the balance right between bloggers and advertisers. Fall to far to one side, and the other group will begin to distance itself. On the other hand, if PPP tries to bind its bloggers more tightly (by rewarding them better) perhaps they will be more successful in the short term by becoming ‘sticky’. If they fail to become sticky by driving too many wedges between the bloggers and the service, bloggers will find other ways to cut out the middleman (for those ‘in the know’) or find other sources of income. With time, some of the revenue sources could be even more stable than PPP, without any of the extra effort that PPP requires.

So it’s important for PPP to get the right balance between itself, its bloggers and its advertisers. PPP is no Ebay, and could be gone in an internet minute.

Kenneth

Disclaimers: I do post for PPP from time to time for which I receive remuneration. Also, an unedited/unrevised version first appeared at Digital Point Forums. There are no affiliate links in this post.