Lets face it, Google does a pretty good job with advertising tageting, especially all those Acai berry, colon cleaning, IMVU and flash games, plus the occasional Chitika ad with Darren Rowse that end up showing as remnant ads.
Google can only monetize a percentage of traffic effectively, and lots of traffic doesn’t click ads.

If you have a landing page for a product, then in most cases an exit pop with some kind of special offer, or page switch to another offer is a very popular option.

But what happens if you just have a blog on general stuff?
What happens if you have a huge site that brings in lots of traffic about “stuff” but you would much prefer to receive traffic than rely on Google for reventue, then somehow use that revenue to buy traffic, just feeding Google all the time.

Advertising Credits

Exit Fire has some kind of multilevel referral system and ad traffic swap.

There doesn’t seem to be any quality control, but maybe there is an army of outsourced workers in the Philippines – there is nothing wrong with the Philippines, I have recently hired a programmer there, I just know that Russell Brunson has or had a lot of staff there.

I can’t rip the math of this apart, or even defend it, as there is not enough information provided in the vague video on the landing page.

This is multilevel marketing that will never get to level 10 – I doubt anyone using Blogrush had referrals beyond level 6 or 7 – mine only went 5 deep.

The service has to be of value even without referrals, but at least it is targeting people who are exiting your site, and it isn’t blocking external links, just people who have already gone.

Exit Pops

The problem with these exit pops is they are rarely worded clearly

Someone has just tried to close a tab and this pops up…

Which button takes you to the partner page and which lets them take the action they wanted to do (close the tab) ?

It is never obvious…

Actions which cause a popup include closing a tab, the back button and a Stumble button – maybe other bookmarking plugins etc.

Junk Traffic

I don’t believe they are going to bring targeted traffic… I just don’t… at least not for niche sites, unless they have humans in the background allocating traffic.

Say for my blog on worm juggling (juggling.. not farming)…. ok yes I am kidding about the niche… kinda ;)

Your general bizop type traffic isn’t going to be targeted.

But say you have a site with lots of untargeted traffic and you wanted to arbitrage that into more valuable traffic… I can see a huge benefit, especially if you have a high bounce rate with TONS of traffic, and something you want to target in a biz op niche elsewhere, maybe even an affiliate link (there was no mention of whether you can use aff links)

Multiple Sites & Spam

I don’t think Russell has learnt very much from John Reese’s experience, other than to make money on the front end as this will possibly burn out very quickly…

The ideal setup is to have lots of untargetted visitors be shown an exit popup to a high quality landing page, or a site which is stuffed full of so much malware the average computer will grind to a halt in a frozen state of activex overload.

It is quite possible to “bait & switch” as well.

I can see an Exit Fire infestation on the horizon unless there is proactive monitoring of every site on an ongoing basis.

If you are going to use this, ensure you send traffic to a suitable landing page, not necessarily a squeeze page.

Make sure you track your results such as

http://andybeard.eu/?utm_source=Exitfire&utm_medium=exit&utm_content=homepage&utm_campaign=Exitfire1

(that isn’t a suatable landing page currently, it is just an example)

At the moment I don’t fully trust their traffic stats, I will need to take a look at my server logs, but I am already seeing referral traffic. It is at the expense of annoying regular visitors, thus I will have to work out a technical solution to fix that if someone else doesn’t.

Verdict

I slapped it on… I even upgraded (the downsell)… as an affiliate as far as I know you don’t get any money for referrals, only traffic.

There is a high chance I will now receive at least one phone call trying to sell me something as they have my phone number… something to bare in mind if you do buy the upsell.

This is a referral link, I might gain some additional traffic to some of my sites if you use it, but as far as I know no financial compensation.

http://www.ExitFire.com/1151

Do I recommend it?

For many niche sites, at this stage not at all.

I really wish there was a lot more information about how the credit system works, and the targeting system if there is one other than someone in the background assigning a category with enough traffic.

If I get the code on a site with a few million visitors a month, will ExitFire even have the inventory to send that traffic somewhere targeted?

I also wish there was more info on the abuse mechanisms, as I would hate someone leaving my site and landing on a malware site that had been referred to as my “partner” in the previous popup, that suggests some kind of vetting.

Hopefully more information will become available, but this is a service that could offer a suitable traffic arbitrage system for many sites who could use a way to leverage lots of traffic into quality referrals.

http://www.ExitFire.com/1151

A couple of days ago Darren over at Problogger highlighted why he didn’t feel good about a specific type of Make Money Blogging training product.

Even though it wasn’t mentioned in Darren’s post, it was quite clear from various references in the post that he was referring to Jack’s latest offering Blog Success.

I am going to turn this on its head a little as I spent a few hours browsing around various B5Media blogs. B5Media is being highlighted as Darren was a founder, and his primary role was training the bloggers, though I am not sure about his current involvement or influence on content strategy.

I understand that they have been going through a lot of mass consolidation of their blogs, and there are tons of redirects from one domain to another, and my taste in content may be different to the general public.

Thus I thought the best way to judge overall content quality would be to use retweets, as recorded by Topsy.com

I am using Topsy as from what I have seen they at least handle internal 301 redirects fairly well, although they don’t seem to do the same for when content gets moved between domains – Tweetmeme doesn’t even handle small changes in permalinks.

Everyjoe.com on Topsy
Blisstree.com on Topsy
Splendidcity.com on Topsy
Bizzia seems to have been recently consolidated into Everyjoe

I also went through a number of their celebrity blogs which haven’t been consolidated, but didn’t see anything that suggested a different emphasis, level of quality or audience engagement.

Only BlissTree seems to have really knocked anything “out of the park” since B5 Media had their site consolidation – wait a moment, that was a post from 2006 on the effect of Coke on the body, and there is another great post on what happens to your body after giving up smoking with 3000+ comments which is also old content.

Even with an army of authors, plus the occasional mention in Darren’s twitter stream the overall public reception of the content is a little bit… muffled.

I am not knocking the strategy or the authors. The authors get paid to write content to specific requirements but ultimately the aim of the current content isn’t to get book deals or speaking engagements, though I do realise some of the B5Media writers are already published authors.

There was no attempt to sell an ebook of “Halloween appetizers” despite Alexa showing it was a recent top search term.

Here is a link to the blog Jack created about Environmental News and dog treats

I have nofollowed the links as I don’t want to have too much of a positive effect on their rankings. To be honest I would have done a bit more work in making things unique, adding a point of view and personality.
I am 50/50 as to whether I would allow the links from my comments though that could be easily fixed by making the sites more personal. When Jack comments with links to the sites, he does do so as himself.

The sites are nothing special, mainly built around niched 3rd party articles, press releases etc sourced through Jack’s custom tools, and using Zemanta in some cases to provide links to 3rd party resources including sites such as the Wall Street Journal and New York Times.

I personally don’t think it is a worse user experience for a search visitor landing on one of Jack’s niche sites compared to landing on a B5 Media blog, though there would probably be less inclination to subscribe.

Can the content Jack uses rank? Probably depending on search queries, linking etc.

With some long tail queries for snippets appearing on his home page he already outranks the original article author, though that isn’t necessarily the goal.

It is too early days to see the full effects of Jack’s linkbuilding efforts, but both sites have 5-10% of content in primary index.

An alternative goal might be to use lots of this kind of site to help rank other higher quality money sites. To be honest when B5Media had 300+ blogs I always assumed they would eventually move to a more solid revenue model such as eCommerce.

B5Media blogs seem to have 5-10% of their indexed content within Google’s primary index, which can easily be achieved with 100% duplicate content.

Blog Success (on the surface) certainly isn’t the authority blogging model Darren is advocating for Problogger readers, but Jack has taught that model in the past with a fair number of his students achieving success, and also teaches that model as a consultant. I would think some of that also carries across into Blog Success.

(highly targetted display advertising)

Update 14/12/2009

Techcrunch had an interesting piece about quality content on Sunday highlighting a post on Wired that descibes the content creation process on sites run by Demand Media.

I am not suggesting filling up the web with junk content – I have always maintained there are ways to aggregate niched content in ways that add value and create a useful end user experience, even if it might not retain long-term subscribers.

Original Title: Speed Linking Slow Linking

First posted Jan 17, 2007 @ 6:55

I don’t like the term speed linking. I like it even less on some blogs that use the “more” tag on a speed linking post, so you don’t even get to click straight through from your feed reader.

I know it helps with traffic numbers, especially if you have a large subscription, but I find it just annoying. Higher traffic that isn’t going to click an advert lowers your CTR.

Another factor to think about is how long people are on your pages. There has been lots of speculation about how long a visitor stays on your site affecting search results. Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, maybe it just doesn’t… yet.

Linking

I write a fair amount about linking… hmm so does Jack Humphreys. Actually Jack writes a lot more than me about linking, and has done for years. In fact, come to mention it, if someone was to ask me to name one person as an expert on linking, Jack would be a good choice.

Jack has just written a great article “Give Links to Gain Authority Status

Jack might even agree with this next part.

Speed Linking = Bad Blogging?

• Unique Relevant Content – Quite frequently, a speed link post doesn’t have much unique content on the page, other than a few links. If you want a page to be unique, and have some value, it needs to have content. One piece of content linking through to another adds value and relevance to both.
• The Fire Exit – Linking through to others is great, but a speed link page is like a Fire Exit. I could understand it if it was an affiliate link… call it a minimalist approach, you don’t write anything to persuade the reader to click through, you just present them with a link and a choice, which pill? We are in a world of tabbed browsers now, but do some justice to the links, even if it is only including a few excerpts and links to related posts.
• Create a reference – If you present a document with lots of useful tips that can’t be totally digested in 30 seconds, there is a higher chance for the post to be bookmarked and saved for reference. That isn’t an excuse for not breaking up your writing with paragraphs, bullets etc.
• Add value – if you write something useful related to someone else’s work, there is a high chance they will link back to you either now or in the future. Are you just a fanboy or do you have a brain and a real opinion?
• Advertising – I mentioned near the start of this article about CTR

  Jack wrote:-

  My advertising rates continue to go up because advertising today is based almost completely on page views. I get new visitor page views, but remember the 37% return visitors? My advertising is affected by that greatly.

  Maybe he needed to make this a little clearer. Repeat traffic and repeat views for the same advertising message is more valuable, because consumers need to see an advert multiple times before it even registers as something interesting, or something they might be looking to buy.

Here is an example of a speed linking type post on Jacks site.

Now first off, Jack publishes full feeds – I am not forced to visit his site to use the links. Thus the links are there to be useful, and not to create supplemental traffic that won’t help CTR.
He does include some comments about why they might be useful to me. I would actually prefer him to write a little more, or to interweave the speed links with references to his own writing on similar subjects.

Back Scratching

Speed Linking can be good for back scratching – links are better if they are surrounded with lots of related keywords, not just for the person you link to, but quite possibly also for yourself.

(highly targetted display advertising)

Judith at SEO Chicks was looking at the new UK Unfair Trading Regulations

Here is a link to the official guidance (PDF).

What follows are my own notes whilst reading through the document, which I thought some readers might find useful, though you should read it in full if you trade from the UK (maybe 400+ subscribers)

6 BANNED PRACTICES (SCHEDULE 1)

(7) Falsely stating that a product will only be available for a very limited
time, or that it will only be available on particular terms for a very limited
time, in order to elicit an immediate decision and deprive consumers of
sufficient opportunity or time to make an informed choice.

A trader falsely tells a consumer that prices for new houses will be
increased in 7 days time, in order to pressurise him into making an
immediate decision to buy.

That hits 50% or more of long page sales letters and many Product Launch Formula tactics such as closing the doors then reopening just a few days later after a “recount” of total sold.

How about those “slightly damaged” copies offers for physical products?

(10) Presenting rights given to consumers in law as a distinctive feature
of the trader’s offer.
A stationer sells pens. He advertises on the following basis: ‘Pens for
sale. If they don’t work I’ll give you your money back or replace them.
You won’t find this offer elsewhere’. If the pen is faulty at the time of
purchase the consumer would be entitled to a refund, repair or
replacement under contract law. The trader’s emphasis on the unique
nature of his offer to refund or replace would breach the CPRs.

Careful when wording guarantees either as a merchant or affiliate

(11) Using editorial content in the media to promote a product where a
trader has paid for the promotion without making that clear in the
content or by images or sounds clearly identifiable by the consumer
(advertorial).
A magazine is paid by a holiday company for an advertising feature on
their luxury Red Sea diving school. The magazine does not make it clear
that this is a paid-for feature – for example by clearly labelling it
‘Advertising Feature’ or ‘Advertorial’. This would breach the CPRs.

It looks like disclosure in the content is becoming law for things like paid posts and reviews on blogs.

It could be argued that this also applies to affiliate links.

(14) Establishing, operating or promoting a pyramid promotional scheme
where a consumer gives consideration for the opportunity to receive
compensation that is derived primarily from the introduction of other
consumers into the scheme rather than from the sale or consumption of
products.
A trader operates a holiday club which offers consumers, on payment of
a membership fee, the opportunity of earning large amounts of money by
recruiting new members to the club. The other benefits of club
membership are negligible compared to the potential rewards of earning
commission for

Pyramids, but this might also affect products sold as resale rights, especially if that is the only option, or closed affiliate programs.

(20) Describing a product as ‘gratis’, ‘free’, ‘without charge’ or similar if
the consumer has to pay anything other than the unavoidable cost of
responding to the commercial practice and collecting or paying for
delivery of the item.
A trader advertises a ‘free’ gift. He then tells consumers that in order to
receive their ‘free’ gift they need to pay an extra fee. This would breach
the CPRs.

Careful how you word those bonuses, not only in your reviews or emails, but especially email headlines and Adwords.

(22) Falsely claiming or creating the impression that the trader is not
acting for purposes relating to his trade, business, craft or profession, or
falsely representing oneself as a consumer.
A second-hand car dealership puts a used car on a nearby road and
displays a handwritten advertisement reading ‘One careful owner. Good
family run-around. £2000 or nearest offer. Call Jack on 01234 56789′.
The sign gives the impression that the seller is not selling as a trader,
and hence this would breach the CPRs.

Are you really just the average Joe making a fortune, or do you have an army of staff or outsources doing everything.

(30) Explicitly informing a consumer that if he does not buy the product
or service, the trader’s job or livelihood will be in jeopardy.

If your house burns down, be careful how you word a firesale.

7 MISLEADING PRACTICES (REGULATIONS 5 AND 6)
7.1 The CPRs prohibit misleading actions and misleading omissions (as
detailed in regulations 5 and 6),16 which cause or are likely to cause the
average consumer to take a different decision.
7.2 A practice can mislead by action or omission or both. These prohibitions
aim to ensure that consumers get from traders, in a clear and timely
fashion, the information they need to make informed decisions relating
to products. In addition, in some commercial practices (referred to as
‘invitations to purchase’) certain specific information must be given to
consumers, unless apparent from the context.

7.6 These are actions that mislead by:
• containing false information OR deceiving or being likely to deceive
the average consumer (even if the information they contain is
factually correct),17
and
• the false information, or deception, relates to one or more pieces of
information in a (wide-ranging) list (see below),
and
• the average consumer takes, or is likely to take, a different decision
as a result.

Which crappy traffic stats package are you using to inflate numbers?

Comments on the following are in bold inline:-

7.7 The list of information mentioned above includes the main factors
consumers are likely to take into account in making decisions relating to
products, for example the main characteristics of the product and the
price or the way it is calculated. The full list follows:

(a) the existence or nature of the product
You really are just a simple guy, and not a marketer trying to sell his ebook written on Elance.
(b) the main characteristics of the product
The whole truth, not the convenient truth
(c) the extent of the trader’s commitments
(d) the motives for the commercial practice
Does this afect loss-leaders, upsell, downsell process?
(e) the nature of the sales process
(f) any statement or symbol relating to direct or indirect sponsorship or
approval of the trader or the product
Testimonials
(g) the price or the manner in which the price is calculated
Include +VAT (Geotarget) on sales pages for Clickbank?
(h) the existence of a specific price advantage

Are you split testing your pricing? This might affect you

(i) the need for a service, part, replacement or repair
(j) the nature, attributes and rights of the trader or his agent
(k) the consumer’s rights or the risks he may face.

The ‘main characteristics of the product’ include:

(a) availability of the product

Thinking of using scarcity?
(b) benefits of the product
Get 1,000,000 subscribers overnight
(c) risks of the product
Did we forget to tell them about Google bans?
(d) execution of the product
(e) composition of the product
(f) accessories of the product
(g) after-sale customer assistance concerning the product
(h) the handling of complaints about the product
(i) the method and date of manufacture of the product
(j) the method and date of provision of the product
(k) delivery of the product
(l) fitness for purpose of the product
(m) usage of the product
(n) quantity of the product
(o) specification of the product
(p) geographical or commercial origin of the product
(q) results to be expected from use of the product
(r) results and material features of tests or checks carried out on the
product.

You need real proof…

The ‘nature, attributes and rights of the trader or his agent’ include:

(a) identity
(b) assets
(c) qualifications
(d) status
(e) approval
(f) affiliations or connections

Here is that disclosure thing again

(g) ownership of industrial, commercial or intellectual property rights
(h) awards and distinctions.

Misleading Omissions (regulation 6)
Giving insufficient information about the product
7.12 Practices may also mislead by failing to give consumers the information
they need to make an informed choice (in relation to a product). This
occurs when practices:
• omit or hide material information, or provide it in an unclear,
unintelligible, ambiguous or untimely manner,
and
• the average consumer takes, or is likely to take, a different decision
as a result
7.13 A misleading omission can also occur where a trader fails to identify the
commercial intent of a practice, if it is not already apparent from the
context. The presence of a price, or of a statement making it clear that
the practice is commercial (for example: ‘this is an advertisement’), are
examples of how commercial intent could be made clear.
OFT931 35
7.14 When deciding whether a practice misleads by omission, the courts will
take account of the context.18

Commercial intent = more disclosure

7.33 Information that is deemed to be material in invitations to purchase is set
out in regulation 6(4), which is summarised below:
• the main characteristics of the product – for example, what it is and
what it does – to the extent appropriate to the medium used by the
invitation to purchase and the product
• the identity of the trader, such as his trading name, and the identity
of any other trader on whose behalf the trader is acting
• the geographical address of the trader or traders

The geographical address has been required since December 2006 (si3429)

The document goes on to cover such things as

• Professional Diligence
• Material Distortion
• Compliance and Enforcement covering
• education, advice and guidance
• established means
• codes of conduct
• civil enforcement
• criminal enforcement

This document covers business or “trader” to consumer regulations, and specific that this does not cover business to business transactions where the product is intended for ultimate business use. If a product is sold to wholesale, then on to a consumer, a lot of this still applies.

I have no idea how this applies to foreign traders doing business with the UK, or where they have a satellite office in the UK or Europe.

I am not a lawyer, and note that the linked document is only guidance and not the full version.
I may very well be reading into this more than the law intended, but this seems to compliment SI3429 which has been largely ignored by many online businesses, and I assume isn’t enforced effectively for this to be the case over a year since publication.
So far I have only spent a couple of hours on the 88 page document and this blog post (speed reading the key information I need). You should read the document in full to extract the information you need.

I know Tim Nash knows a few lawyers who specialise in this kind of thing.

Update

Tim has just published an overview of which legal notices you might be expected to publish on your site. It is aimed at people in the UK and possibly Europe and many such regulations are universal.
Remember, I am not a lawyer, and nor is Tim

Update 2

It took a couple of weeks, but there now seems to be some mainstream online media attention to these new regulations.

Adage points out that this came into force across Europe in January though only goes into some of the most mainstream forms of WOMM.

Paid Content (UK) also focuses on the more corporate sector

Peter Parks has condensed things down to lots of bullet points.

Over on Daily Blog Tips, 10 Essential Legal Points For Bloggers covers other legal matters. I think Tims post is beter on legal paperwork, but it does cover a few other angles. It was written by lawyer Steve Imparl so has some level of credibility, I am going to have to delve into his blog archives to see if there is some more meaty content.

Yes… the headline he used was hype and a little controversial, but ultimately as he concludes, often that is what will draw traffic.

As a bonus he also gained 90 visitors from TrafficJam

Ultimately success with BlogRush is really down to the blogger. If they don’t get traffic from BlogRush, maybe they need to work a little on their headlines and experiment.

Note:This is targeted traffic who know what the article they will see is about before they read it, unlike something like Stumbleupon, and he didn’t have to run around reading 100s of blogs to achieve it. It is a scalable solution.

Normally it is also very important to add something special to the sales message, a compelling reason why you are offering a special offer on the products. There are all kinds of psychological why you would do this, which I am not going to delve into, but if you Google for Mike’s free guide “FireSale Secrets” you will pick up some good tips.

Meet Timothy

For the last couple of weeks I have been visiting him with my wife every few days, 8 hour round trips, and he should be coming to live with us within the next 2 weeks. Final adoption paperwork will take a little longer.

I am not going to write a long story of desperation, my wife and I moved into a new house just before Christmas, and rushing the completion was primarily due to the progress in our adoption. That does leave the coffers a little empty.

This is something I have been planning doing for a couple of months though a few other pans on the fire were preventing me make a decision.

I have no intention of making this a 20 page sales letter, so this is how this will work.

Advertising Firesale Details

I am not going to totally abandon affiliate marketing – on this blog I have been keeping it to offers I highly recommend or thought would be interesting to my readers, and earnings were less important.

This however will be an interesting experiment… unlimited advertising slots in equal rotation

I have set up just a single zone, although advertising will rotate in various places on the blog.

The final layout will be different to how it is currently.

125×125 Banners

Current layout:

12 125×125 slots on the front page and archives
6 125×125 slots on single permalink pages

Future Layout:

4 or 6 125×125 slots on the front page
12 125×125 slots for archives
12 125×125 slots on single permalink pages
0 slots on pages that might be used as landing or squeeze pages for PPC or products
4 ads within the RSS feed

With the current design it would be a little difficult with 12 adverts on the single pages, as the sidebars are almost empty. With the planned new design I am hoping there will be a lot of useful content there, so it will fit in much better – it will fit in much better than for example the 12 ads that Techcrunch are currently running.

I am going to reserve 4 slots for myself, and expect to sell maybe 30 or 40 slots initially, though I am not going to place any limit.

Here are some accurate traffic stats as I am a quantified publisher.

Those are unique visitors, there was a bit of a slump over December, not just due to the season, but also because I wasn’t posting due to moving house and connection problems.

Traffic is picking up again, and I expect it to grow

The aim is for each 125×125 advert to be displayed at least 20,000 per month here on the site, and I also intend to include them in my feed currently to 3500 subscribers.

The math is fairly easy

60,000 page views / (approx 36 adverts / 12) = 20,000

Articles are typically read by 1500 to 2000 people (based on current subscriber numbers) and based on previous posting schedules that could amount to 5000 to 10000 additional impressions, though those will be hard to track.

The traffic I receive is 35 – 37% search, 30% social media (Stumbleupon + Sphinn) and the remainder is referral though that varies and is highly knowledgeable and engaged, just look at the comments when browsing through my archives.

My subscribers have a high percentage of influencers.

Other Stats If They Are Worth Anything

Technorati Top1000 blog (currently 666 – the devil)
Alexa typically below 20K (slightly above currently – has been below 12K)
Links will all be nofollow on site (but not in feed) , but potentially PageRank 6 if/when restored

Current ranked by Advertising Age as one of the top 20 marketing blogs in the world

Pricing

This is a firesale, so it is going to start off low and increase over time

Also significant is that these are the prices that you can lock in so even when my traffic grows, you continue to pay the same amount should you decide to continue.

Due to software limitations, I set the duration to 100 days, but the pricing will effectively be for 3 months, and I am throwing in a few extra days as a bonus – the advertising will run until the end of May 2008

$60 – From now until 3pm PST Feb 21st 2008 or for the first 10 units
70 – 3pm PST Feb 21st 2008 until 3pm PST Feb 22nd 2008 or for 10 to 20 units
$80 – 3pm PST Feb 22nd 2008 until 3pm PST Feb 23rd 2008 or for 20 to 30 units
$90 – 3pm PST Feb 24th 2008 until 3pm PST Feb 25th 2008 or for 30 to 40 units
$100 thereafter

I haven’t got things automated to switch at a particular time, so there may be a little leeway on the timing, and especially on the quantity, but if this is something that would interest you, I suggest you grab it at the lowest price possible.

It is my belief that the $100 price is still very good value for 3 months of advertising, and a continued locked in rate

Rules

• You are allowed to buy multiple slots, but different artwork needs to be used in each one
• Advertising cannot be resold
• The slots are not for affiliate links – I would much prefer to be dealing with product owners, though tracking links are fine
• If less than 20 slots are sold, then I reserve the right to add some of my own banners until the total reaches 24
• Only family friendly legal & relevant links

I will be wearing my advertising manager hat rather than editorial hat when judging adverts, so advertising will not be an editorial decision one way or the other.
I will quite happily display advertising from Google next to adverts from link sellers

No payment will be charged until adverts are accepted
No refunds will be accepted, including, but not limited to click-through rates, traffic numbers or short term technical problems
The only remedy that will be considered, at my sole discretion would be an extension of the display period which in no event would exceed 6 days.
If you are crazy enough to take me to court over it, it would be great linkbait, but jurisdiction would be Poland or elsewhere at my convenience and discretion.

Additional Avertising

My own products, though that would displace widgets, not advertising

I intend to continue displaying the Strategic Profits widget and other widgets as currently, and may at my own discretion change what is displayed as part of my core content is discussion of such blog widgets.

I will also be offering the opportunity to become a “premium sponsor” for the blog, which would allow for extensive branding and livery decisions at the time of redesign. I expect that to be in the region of $3-4000 for a 3 month period, with up to half that money invested in what I hope will be a notable custom redesign.

I am going to be working hard to boost subscribers, traffic and attention for your advertising, grab a discount rate while you can.

Update

I am aware that currently a single advert is being displayed in all slots.

I had to actually hack the plugin a little to start with, as it isn’t designed to sell advertising quite in this way. I have contacted the programmer, and between us I am sure it will be sorted out fairly soon.

Note about the purchase process: it is a little confusing, as you are sent a payment link before your advertising has been accepted. Please wait until you receive an acceptance email before attempting payment. It won’t break things, but I know it has caused a little confusion.

Thanks to all the advertisers so far

Update 2

This is a Firesale, and we have now had the first price increase to $70. A couple of lucky readers squeezed in at the last minute, and I did sell a few more slots at $60 than planned.

Also of note Simon Emery whose OIOPublisher plugin I am using for advertising management was remarkable. He got home late from his new job, but still found time to help me fix the advertising rotation problems.

I should point out that all I am doing is reducing the discount for early adopters. If you compare my advertising prices with many blogs even the $100 price point for over 3 months of advertising is extremely attractive, especially considering the influential readers I frequently attract and have as subscribers.

Grab a discount rate while you can.

There are multiple reasons why I have supported PayPerPost and similar programs so strongly, and yet at the same time have never reviewed a link buying / selling service.

I have mentioned link buying and selling in passing, and also a couple of WordPress plugins, but those plugins generally allow you to sell links which have a nofollow.

My emphasis both in editorial about services and in the few reviews I have myself written is to encourage the writing of quality content with editorial links. Compensation in whatever form should be based upon the time involved, expertise, and possibly the size and influence of the audience, and not based upon any SEO benefit to a site or service being reviewed.

Encouraging The Selling of PageRank?

It is my belief that I don’t advocate the selling of PageRank, especially considering how I also discourage excessive blogrolls and sitewide links. If you have links coming in for your every utterance, I suppose internal linking structure is less important to you than acknowledging sites you respect (who might also reciprocate), or possibly those you sell links to (if you do) but in general for niche marketing blogs I tend to avoid leaks in the sidebar.

Comments on Sphinn and even here in the comments recently suggest there is some kind of disconnect between how I regard paid review services, and possibly how they are regarded, used and abused by the SEO community at large, and possibly Google reacting to that attitude taken by SEOs and not that taken by the review services, or the reviewers themselves. I think it is important to point out that PayPerPost was created by a marketing company, not by an SEO or link selling company.

Rather than single out individuals for the comments they have made, I would rather answer a specific question asked here on my blog by Lisa Stewart

Hi Andy- thanks for the excellent and well thought out post and arguments FOR services like PayPerPost.

To play Gevil’s Advocate- If a site (like PPP) is offering a fee to post and the fee is based entirely on Page Rank (and sometimes Alexa traffic) then why can’t it be interpreted as paying for page rank?
A post coming from PPP on a PR3 site may cost advertiser 10.00 and the SAME post on PR5 is 50.00.

Why wouldn’t Google seeing this as gaming PR?

Now I should point out that at this time Google is interpreting this as gaming PageRank. I personally feel this is the wrong interpretation, but then my own interpretation could be extremely biased. I have been penalized by Google, even though I believe I don’t sell PageRank.

Advertiser Or Client Intent

Every potential client who has requested a review and I have considered for a review, when told that specific link text is not a possibility, and that any link I give would be for editorial purposes, has responded favourably.

It seems people are not necessarily ordering reviews for SEO purposes at all, though I do give SEO friendly links to things I highlight as part of the editorial process.

Many corporate advertisers have a different need to fulfil, that of creating a buzz about a new product and feel that blogs are an interesting avenue to explore. They will most likely get different feedback than they would from traditional reviews sites, because a reviewer whilst being a consumer, would also spend more time doing it.
In the attention age we live in, gaining feedback from consumers whilst increasingly vital, is also becoming increasingly more difficult – sure consumers might make a passing comment, but constructive feedback is less likely, unless they feel aggrieved.

Google, Microsoft, and even most startups have rank upon rank of staff members and shareholders to “get the message out” about a new product or service, but in many ways those too are paid reviews that don’t mention competing products or services.
Other large companies don’t have such an extensive and influential online presence amongst their staff and investors, thus they look to other alternatives.

• Internal PR – the largest firms retain their own public relations specialists, often with shared ties to advertising personel – this isn’t a cheap undertaking.
• PR Firms – expensive but have access to key influencers
• Press releases – wider distribution costs money, though they are less effective for companies that aren’t monitored continually, and information is less likely to trickle down to niche markets – I have seen a number of popular websites hosting paid press releases
• Focus groups – Google themselves pay $75 per hour for people to test their services, and are probably paying the person monitoring them even more – from this they gain private feedback, but I wonder how many people also write about the experience.
• Product sample giveaways – quite frequently these do not have to be given back, so a blog owner can keep them, or give them away to readers.
• Special events – I have attended special events by major Fortune 500 corporations launching products where many of the exhibitors (including me) had flight, room and board funded, along with display space, and the same was probably true of the press.
• Paid reviews and buzz marketing

For some reason there is a disconnect between paying a blogger $10 to $200 for a post, and paying a staff member $100 per hour to chase a group of bloggers to write something for free, feed them with drinks, sponsor their events etc.

Social media optimization might be looked on as successful if a $5000 budget garnered 50 to 100 links, but paid reviews can garner many more links for a similar budget, and could also be used in conjunction with a social media campaign.

Paid blogging is a way of grabbing the attention of a blogger to consider looking at a product or service and sharing their experiences about it in public.

There are obviously some companies that use it specifically for SEO purposes, and some bloggers who are willing to write something purely for SEO purposes. Then again have you never heard of “SEO press releases” and “Article Marketing” where the content is provided 100% with links just to copy and paste.

I don’t think Hewlett Packard, Ford, or major movie studios really care that much about whether links count for search engines, but they probably do care if links are clicked. If you use nofollow, to a percentage of readers who see the link, the fact that you use nofollow suggests that you don’t trust the service you are writing about, the intent of nofollow.
The same is true for any redirects which suggest affiliate links and commercial tracking.

It is quite possible that 30% of my readers, and possibly more than 50% of my regular readers can see when I have used a nofollow on a link, because I encourage them to use the Search Status plugin for Firefox.

When Google and Microsoft employees start linking to their employers using nofollow, that is when I will start using nofollow on paid reviews and linking to consulting clients.

Leading People Astray

It has been suggested that my coverage of PayPerPost, Paid Reviews, and PageRank is in some way leading people astray, and thus the “Pied Piper” connotation.

My firm belief is that my readership is extremely mature and intelligent, and quite capable of making their own informed decisions.

Many do sell advertising in various ways without the nofollow attribute value, and would choose to use that advertising or not without my intervention, as they chose to use it in the first place without my input.

When half your family income comes from a few links in the sidebar on a few blogs, it is a very difficult decision to remove them just before Christmas, especially if you have long-term contracts.

If I was to denounce PayPerPost, it would have very little effect on the decision process each would make as an individual.

Alternative Metrics For Authority

There is a pay scale in many aspects of every day life, the time of different people has a different perceived value.

Advertisers, companies doing market research, and those looking for a little consulting need some way to determine a suitable pay scale.

• Traffic metrics

  Alexa and Compete are not very relative to niches, and not enough people install Quantcast code on their site to get a real measure.

• Technorati

  easily gamed with WordPress themes and widgets – eventually Technorati do kick sites out of the Top100 but the APis will still send high ratings. Competitions and “review my blog” have also been looked on as a good way of boosting Technorati rankings, and then we shouldn’t forget memes and link chains.
  Technorati really need to move away from counting anything in a sidebar, including blogroll links.

• Feedburner Subscribers

  You would hope that this would be accurate, but due to the problems with default feed packages, and cross promotions of alternative reading platforms, the real number of subscribers could be anything from 30% to 90% of the number shown… and of course that doesn’t mean that people even open their feed reader.

• Comments

  How much can your blog actually stimulate discussion on other blogs, and in your own comments. This is a measure of influence.

• Clicks From Feeds

  Lots of people subscribe to content but don’t read it, or take action by clicking through to an article or referenced site. Feedburner do offer some tracking, but it is hard to use this as an external metric, and to get good results you have to use their tracking URLs which then reduce the numbers of links counted by other metrics such as Technorati. People make linking mistakes.

• Social News & Bookmarking

  Most sites provide some kind of API access, thus allowing you to judge the quality of a page based upon social factors and popularity. These are also gamed to a certain extent. Stumbleupon need to provide an API. Eventually something like the Social Media for Firefox extension might be looked on as more useful than other metrics.

• Meme Trackers

  Meme trackers try to track what is a hot story right now, such as Techmeme and Megite. The nearest thing they provide to an overall measure of influence are compilations of statistics such as the Techmeme Leaderboard. It is a very small subset of sites.

• Custom Metrics

  Scripts such as Blogstorm can give an indication of popularity, but require server side access, and for a blog owner to care about being listed.

• PageRank

  Proving to be too easily gamed (WordPress themes and funny redirects), and the visual representation provided in the Google toolbar is now being adjusted with manual PageRank penalties with arguably commercial considerations. It hasn’t been very meaningful for search results for some time, and now it is no longer a metric of social influence by anyone that understand these things. Unfortunately Google mislead their Google Toolbar users.



• Argus Is Coming

  I am excited about the potential of whatever Izea (PayPerPost) come up with for their Argus project which promised to provide a comprehensive metrics service for both bloggers and advertisers.

  I haven’t seen it, am not on the alpha test, and might not get early access to it because I am not going to be at Postiecon or Blog World Expo.

Examples Of PageRank Used For Ranking

The Google Directory
The Adage Power 150
The Top 25 Blogs About Blogging
The Top 100 Make Money Onine Blogs

The of course there is the PayPerPost Direct – it is an advertiser marketplace and PageRank is used as one of the indicators of authority or influence, but you can’t search the database based upon that field, and it is just one metric offered and soon to be removed.

It is quite possible Google just took that database of sites for its penalty list, without realising that whilst PageRank is used as an indication of authority, bloggers are free to set their own criteria in private discussion with someone requiring some kind of review service. Bloggers are quite able to specify that they will nofollow the links, or use redirects. they are also able (as I do) to insist that all links are editorial..

I know bloggers on that list who have never written a review for PayPerPost.

Techcrunch Crunchies

In closing, Techcrunch along with a number of other technology blogs will soon launch what appears to be an award ceremony for technology startups.
If there happens to be a monetization or blogging category, I know who I am going to nominate, and encourage people to vote for.
In something as serious as an award called “The Crunchies”, I am quite happy to try to influence any results.

Update

I just want to highlight why I don’t support paid links and this is the kind of review I really wish Sebastian had been paid for.

If Sebastian was giving that type of advice in private, it would probably cost someone $1000 or more… seriously, Sebastian knows his stuff, just as he demonstrated with the Blogcatalog redirect problems in the past.

PayPerPost and now Izea

Fittingly I think Colleen should have the first link, she has been a postie for a long time, is a top earner, and has been taking an equal amount of punches being on the firing line.
Colleen highlights the fact that PayPerPost have been planning to have a new domain for their Argus platform for some time, and it is only logical that Argus is not housed under the PayPerPost moniker, because PayPerPost will only be one of many services provided.

People who actually monitor the PayPerPost blog of course knew this was coming a month ago.

Dan, an investor in PayPerPost… well now the parent company Izea, seems happy about how money is being spent.
That is important, I am sure the Izea.com domain name cost a lot more than $9 from GoDaddy.

Here is a link to the official Izea Press release on the new corporate entity.

Mixed Reactions To Izea & PayPerPost

As always with anything related to PayPerPost, there is a lot of controversy, and mixed reaction. I have covered the more positive stuff so far, so what follows is the more neutral or negative opinion.

On Scobleizer.com

Robert Scoble writes

Translation: Ted’s company is interesting to watch cause he pisses off lots of A listers but I’m still not sure he’s really going to build something disruptive. A company doesn’t change its name if it’s loved.

Ted Murphey responds in the comments

With over 80,000 bloggers and 11,000 advertisers (including Fortune 500 companies) in our family changing the name of the parent company was a difficult decision. While we may not be loved by all A-Listers, I do feel we have a strong connection with the bloggers we serve. The name change may be hard for some of our long term supporters, but this is the right thing long term. PayPerPost.com will remain our flagship product, it just won’t be the name of the parent organization.

The name change itself is by no means disruptive, however it does provide a framework that will allow us to innovate by offering new services that don’t necessarily belong under the PayPerPost brand.

I do believe that when it launched PPP was a disruptor. I think our newest innovation (codenamed Argus) will achieve much of the same success when it is released to the public.

Tanya questioned the negative connotation

Ted responded

Tanya : The name itself is too limiting. The name PayPerPost clearly described the business when we started but confines us long term. I am not saying PPP doesn’t have a negative connotation for some bloggers, but that is not the driver behind this change. Were it the driver we would change PayPerPost.com to Izea.com and that is not the case. PayPerPost.com will continue to operate as it is under the IZEA umbrella.

Read/Write Web – The Pot Calling The Kettle Black

For a website selling PageRank passing advertising within both their sponsors section, and possibly their “partners” section, though maybe partners is just payola, I find it wrong for Marshall Kirkpatrick to concentrate on bloggers being paid peanuts and gaming the search engines.

I don’t get paid peanuts, but I do probably charge a lot less than I should for a review, my links are editorial, and my readership likes the content I write.

It seems Marshall prefers to encourage domainers to fill up the internet with parked domains showing duplicate content.

Mashable = Balanced Coverage

Mashable is notable that on many controversial issues, they keep a balanced line. They are quite capable of stirring up their own controversy, especially regarding Google’s feed stats and feed bundles and internal linking, but I actually take a similar line on those myself.

(Did you notice Techcrunch’s commentary on PageRank linked to no one?)

Those actually are relevant links, because as Mashable highlight, Izea’s new Argus platform is being hinted to have new metrics available for advertisers.

Lots of the extensive gaming of advertising stats in the industry are going to be wiped out, and many detractors of PayPerPost might be forced to use one of their services.

On Jim Kukral

Jim takes the balanced view as he has a much longer memory than most Tech bloggers

E-Consultancy

I just want to point out that PayPerPost have never offered money to any postie that I know of to break an exclusive story. Sometime after an announcement they have had opportunities for buzz marketing. Would they have vetted a story? I doubt it, they have never asked to do something like that in the past. Colleen is in a privileged position, because I believe she has actually seen Argus during a beta testing focus group, and it shouldn’t be assumed that people writing for PayPerPost are “selling out“.

The choice of linking to the Read/Write article was strange coming from a site that lists the following in their reasons to advertise in their directory.

* We link directly to your web site which has 2 benefits:
o It improves your search engine rankings
o It means our users can go straight through to your site
* You also get your listing enhanced in the PDF print version of the directory
* We include e-mail contact details
* You get more prominent formatting in any search results
* Your logo is include to help prominence and branding
* Search result prioritisation – so you rank near the top on relevant searches
o You specify 5 keywords which you want to rank top for
* Detailed online performance reporting [View sample]
o You know how many people are viewing your listing and who

Sounds to me very similar to what people degrade PayPerPost about. There is certainly no open disclosure that paid listings are paid listings.

PayPerPost Reaction To PageRank Decrease

As I have been trying to keep a record of the official stance of the major players in the Google Pagerank Fiasco, here is a quote I found on the PayPerPost message boards, from Ted Murphey, CEO of Izea (and PayPerPost)

Posties,
Before you start pointing fingers at PPP for any Google PRupdate I would take a look here:

http://andybeard.eu/2007/10/pagerank-update.html

This is a net wide hit that effect many high profile bloggers and sites in general including Forbes and SFGate.com

On a related note:

This is all the more reason that we are moving to more quantifiable segmentation options like visitors and pageviews in Argus. PR has nothing to do with the value you create for advertisers. If your PR drops from 6 to a 3 overnight does it mean you have half the amount of visitors or clicks you will generate? No. It means that Google arbitrarily assigned a value to your blog that is not necessary representative of the value you create.

Google is determining your blog’s value and subsequent earnings capability with an algorithm that is based on protecting their own paid search revenue.

Up with actually stats! Down with PR!

Now admittedly that was made before the dust settled, after my first post.

I think the dust has settled enough to determine that Google have penalized PayPerPost users, at least those with clear disclosure and I am one of them.

However just like I believe that I am not selling PageRank, I strongly believe that is the case for most PayPerPost writers.
It really is about the quality of the content written, the buzz, and the real feedback that advertisers can receive about their product.

Primary new features include:-

• Enterprise level delivery – Capability to serve billions of ads per month
• Smoother campaign delivery and prioritisation
• Easy integration with leading applications: Track Google and Yahoo! clicks
• Enhanced targeting and campaign management
• Better reporting capability

Full feature comparison list

OpenAds is a complete tracking solution and advertising rotation system, and best of all it is free.

Why Use OpenAds?

It allows you to manage your advertising from one central location, avoid banner blindness and serve different adverts to different visitors.

Whilst lots of WordPress plugins try to optimize for different audiences, such as switching off adverts for social media traffic, Openads can do it with simplicity.
Look at all these filtering options.

* Browser
* Domain
* IP Address
* Language
* Operating System
* Useragent
* US Area Code
* City
* Continent
* Country
* DMA
* Netspeed
* ISP/Organisation
* US/Canada Post Code
* Region
* Referring Page
* Source
* Date
* Day of Week
* Hour of Day
* Longitude/Latitude
* Channel
* Homepage
* Page URL
* Variable

Whilst you might feel it is overkill for a single blog, if you configure a blog to use OpenAds extensively, you have more control, and a lot less plugins and custom code.

As an example why show subscription options on every page to someone who has visited 20 times?

Eventually I will have a full review, but in the meantime give it a try.

Blocking adverts could actually cost you money, or damage the web as we know it is today.

Ok, don’t take my word for it, Nicholas Carr wonders would Jesus block adverts with Adblock Plus?

As always a compelling read

If javascript based adverts get blocked, and possibly images, what are Google going to do?

That is one of the reasons I have been writing about how to do trackbacks on blogger, because it is much harder to get attention of a busy blogger just by linking.

Openads got my attention by something as simple as adding me to their blogroll, and I noticed the link in Technorati.

What is OpenAds?

OpenAds used to be phpAdsNew and I have been meaning to play around with this for some time.
It is a script you can run to provide full control of your advertising inventory, both for yourself and your advertisers.

OpenAds is an opensource platform, just like WordPress, and is in very active development. Currently they are looking for beta testers for OpenAds 2.3 which adds lots of new features though they have suggested in the announcement post on the OpenAds blog that you should have a fair degree of technical competence.

Currently on most of my niche sites I use PHP Includes for the advertising, and just upload changes to a standard set of files. It is not ideal, but it also does allow me to migrate to other options such as using an advertising management system, such as the type OpenAds provides.

Expect a full review in a few weeks time, but I thought I would drop them a mention here in advance.