Not everyone agreed with my review and there were 4 major arguments against using the service from various corners of the blogosphere.

• PayPerPost don’t provide a marketplace for their bloggers using PayPerPost direct, and that without a marketplace it would be hard for a blogger and an advertiser to connect.
• Bloggers should sell direct – supporter of this argument suggested that the 10% additional fee that PayPerPost added ontop of what a blogger receives was excessive, and it would be better to have an advertising sales page, and handle any transaction directly
• The icons provided by PayPerPost were ugly
• No High Paying Advertisers – it was believed that all PayPerPost advertisers were “low budget” and that the service wouldn’t attract major brands with deeper pockets.

$7 Million in New Funding

Companies don’t receive a second round of funding unless investors have taken a very close look at the future of a company, and their ability to meet goals and deliver based upon their business plan.

Tomorrow PayPerPost will officially announce $7M USD Series B funding led by Draper Fisher Jurvetson whose Managing Director Josh Stein joins the board, and additional participants Inflexion Partners, Village Ventures and new investor DFJ Gotham.

With Series A funding last year of $3M plus initial seed funding by the founders, that brings total investment of over $10M USD.

PayPerPost mean business and are in this for the long haul, and with that much money in the kitty, they can afford to be generous to their marketplace of bloggers.

I notice Michael Arrington has already posted his views on the new round of funding. He seems to think the fact that the same investors are involved this second time to be a sign that other investors want to keep their hands clean.
That is possible, because Michael has been giving them constant bad press, and who knows, maybe the numbers don’t add up for other investors.

An alternative could be equally well said that the current investors don’t feel the need for a lot of fresh blood on the board of directors, are happy with the ability of PayPerPost to deliver based upon their development schedule, and they don’t seem to be having problems finding bloggers or advertisers.

Michael has also got a podcast available with Ted Murphey, CEO of PayPerPost and Josh Stein, the new board member.
Update:- I should have checked out the link first – it is actually the old podcast from back in November, worth listening to if you haven’t heard it, though a lot of it is now out-of-date.

New PayPerPost Marketplace

Time for some pictures:-

The initial PayPerPost Marketplace view is unfiltered. It allows you to sort through PayPerPost’s 28000 bloggers either by price in ascending or decending order, or by “tack” which is based on the rating a blogger has received from advertisers.

It should be noted that posties (the bloggers) who have been very active in the PayPerPost system prior to the launch of PayPerPost direct are more likely to have higher quality ratings at this stage. New bloggers who have been attracted to PayPerPost because of the new direct service may have been writing reviews for competing services. I would think it will be a while before this situation becomes balanced out, but it is great for those that have been supporting PayPerPost as bloggers for almost a year.

So lets apply a filter and see what we find, in this case we will go for primary categories Business and Technology, and set the filter between $50 and $200.

The result for that filter is 30 bloggers sorted in alphabetical order (though you can still sort by price or quality), who match the category and price choices.

The display only shows a snippet of information about each blogger, but it is possible to click through to a profile for more information.

Power User Tip For Posties – You will notice in this next screenshot that I did some experimentation, and that you can use some HTML in your description. Hopefully that will remain because it helps you improve your presentation.
Also note in the preceding screenshot that my snippet displayed isn’t very inviting. It will be important to optimize you first paragraph to encourage people to click through to a full description.

Statistics such as Pagerank and Alexa Traffic are available on the profile page – Technorati Authority is not used, because PayPerPost made the decision recently not to use Technorati ratings, because they can be fairly inaccurate. As an example a theme designer could have a much higher authority with Technorati than major blogs such as Techcrunch, Engadget and BoingBoing.

You will also note that tags are displayed, but there currently isn’t a way to sort blogs based upon tagging – hopefully this is something that will be added in the future. I also hope they move away from having bloggers enter space separated tags, and them being displayed comma separated.
It would be much more accurate to have comma separated tags being entered, and then displayed without adjustment. This would allow tags to be multiple words, such as used by Technorati.

Lets look at the other shortcomings raised 2 weeks ago by other bloggers

Bloggers Should Sell Direct

I thought in my review of PayPerPost Direct 2 weeks ago that orders that will be coming from a new direct marketplace would have a higher charge for processing payable by advertisers. It looks like that is currently not going to be the case.
A 10% fee for order processing, technology, and providing a marketplace and escrow service really isn’t a major concern, especially with the way PayPerPost promote their bloggers to advertisers.

I imagine the level of blogger promotion is set to increase, and that bloggers will be rotated through the system.

The Icons Are Ugly

You could always include them on an advertising sales page rather than in your blog sidebar, and that might be an option I will consider in the future.
The system also allows you to use your own custom icons, or just a text link.

I think a more valid argument, which I don’t think I have heard anyone raise is the ability to customise the popup when someone clicks on a link.

If I only want to allow neutral tone orders, I don’t want any other option available to an advertiser, and I would also prefer to give links in an editorial context, and not have advertisers specify link text – I have a fair amount of SEO experience, and I am not going to give people junk links, but I want to have the choice.

No High Paying Advertisers

In the press release going out tomorrow, PayPerPost confirm they currently have over 6500 advertisers, and those advertisers have ordered, and PayPerPost have delivered 125,000 blog posts – that is probably a turnover of over $1,500,000 in the last year. Not huge by any means, but that number is increasing. I am sure more than $1m of that is in the last 6 months.

Zookoda

PayPerPost purchased Zookoda not too long ago and that business has a lot of potential if they expand into a similar territory as that previously occupied by Feedburner.

Feedburner were recently acquired by Google

Ted, Dan & The PayPerPost Team

Investors invest in people, not just ideas. Dan is one of the investors in PPP, but in many ways is also one of the marketing team, and highly dedicated.

Ted is charismatic and smart, and doesn’t seem phased by anything. Whilst many startups are founded by geeks and don’t have a business plan, PayPerPost was founded by a marketer who saw a need for a certain product in the marketplace.

My blogging friend Jim Kukral frequently calls Ted a Marketing Genius and PayPerPost have certainly capitalised on the controversy that they have caused since they were launched.

The PayPerPost team seem to be very dedicated, and you can tell if you watch any of the videos on RockStartup that they are a well oiled machine, and having fun and delivering development milestones like clockwork.

Calling Microsoft & Yahoo

PayPerPost is a disruptive business model, not just to the blogosphere, but also to advertising. It could be argued that it is also disruptive for search results, but generally it is successful companies who offer good products who can afford to advertise on a large scale, and bloggers who work for Microsoft or Yahoo, and even Google effectively promote their own company products all over the blogosphere whenever something is launched.

Surprise surprise, there are some major companies who offer great product who don’t already have 1000+ bloggers on their payroll, and they would like bloggers talking about them as well.

If Microsoft or Yahoo buy PayPerPost, it would be extremely disruptive to their major competitor, Google, both by offering an advertising model Google can’t touch because of prior criticism (though not official), and one that affects Google’s search quality (supposedly, though there is very little proof)

6 months or less to a major acquisition?

Expect more information on the PayPerPost blog tomorrow and here is a direct link through to the new PayPerPost marketplace.

Update:

Think I covered everything? Think again…

Kat for instance pointed out how well PayPerPost are promoting their bloggers, with the rotating spotlight on bloggers at the top of the bloggers page in the new design. She also highlights some very interesting demographic information that is currently available.
To give you some idea of the misconceptions among the tech sector that “mommy bloggers” are not a worthy audience for advertising, I know Kat gets more traffic than I do every month.

I think the Forbes reporter has been reading Techcrunch too much, and should maybe vary his reading habits more. Whilst the coverage is reasonably accurate on the facts, there is a definite negative slant without looking at what really happens in the blogosphere by employees of INC500 companies who happen to be bloggers.
Colleen again was being misquoted by the press, but in what must be a fairly unique situation, actually gained 2 links from Forbes.

It looks like Jules has found the press section on the new PPP site and is taking advantage of the photos provided.

Update2:

Compensated reviews can be of high quality, all you have to do is take pride in what you write. This article by SapphireKnight in a sponsored post for PayPerPost about the latest funding goes into detail about the difference between the original PayPerPost Marketplace and the new Direct Marketplace.

Dan from the Venture Capital Florida Blog, who is a managing partner of Inflexion Partners hinted to me in a quick email exchange that Pay Per Post had some very significant changes coming in the very near future, and he was certainly right.

Halfway through writing this review of PayPerPost Direct I hit a problem, and I really needed to check my facts straight from the horse’s mouth. After being passed from the PayPerPost PR agency to the PayPerPost switchboard, I discovered that Ted Murphy is truly protected by a wall of iron, and direct contact at short notice might be difficult.

I opted for plan B, went searching into the depths of my Gmail account, and I was fortunate enough to find a direct phone number to Ted in some old email correspondence.

Thus part of this review is direct from the PayPerPost Hotline

PayPerPost Announce Pay Per Post Direct

With Pay Per Post Direct you can reach out to advertisers, even those not currently in the PPP network, and advertise your own blogs and content. We’ve found in the past that advertisers often want to directly hire good bloggers to write about their products or services and with PayPerPost Direct that’s now possible.

Whilst I have written reviews with both ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews in the past, and I have supported Pay Per Post because I appreciate their business model, I have never written a review for their service.
I wasn’t interested in many of their opportunities for a number of reasons.

1. Many of the topics were not suitable – my blog is a business blog, and many of the opportunities were more “niche” or suitable for a blog about “stuff”
2. I didn’t qualify for the higher paying opportunities that might have been suitable content for my audience, and the lower paid opportunities for the same subjects were often snapped up by active Pay Per Post users extremely fast
3. The time allowed to post a paid review with PayPerPost before it is no longer reserved limits the amount you can really write about each service.
4. I wasn’t prepared to log into the service multiple times per day trying to find something to write about to make money

Up until now, ReviewMe and Sponsored Reviews provided the best marketplace for what I would look on as being “professional reviews”, and I mean no disrespect with that term.
If you want to be able to spend 10 hours writing a review for a service over a couple of days, it was previous impossible with PayPerPost, and the higher priced reviews were more about the huge traffic potential from a popular blog than the possible benefits of a review as a consultant.

How To Qualify For Pay Per Post Direct

First of all you have to sign up for Pay Per Post as a “postie” – it sometimes can take a couple of days to be accepted depending on demand, and I am sure with this new service there will be a huge amount of new demand, so be patient.

Whilst you are waiting for acceptance, you can install the code, and make sure your blog has very clear disclosure – clear disclosure is a requirement with Pay Per Post.

Update: I have been notified that there is no waiting time or qualifications for Pay Per Post Direct, you can sign up and display the badges the same day.
There is still a waiting time for acceptance into the marketplace

Once you are fully qualified, your interface within the PayPerPost system should look a bit like this under “My Blogs”

Buy Cheaper Reviews With PayPerPost

One of the things made clear by Dan Rua in the comments of my review of Sponsored Reviews, is that Pay Per Post actually have the lowest markup of the big 3 paid reviews services.

At RM, that $150 delivers $75 to the blogger and $75 to RM as a 50% “cut” (75/150) or a 100% “markup” (75/75).
At SR, that $150 delivers $98 to the blogger and $52 to SR as a 35% “cut” (52/150) or a 53% “markup” (52/98). (see “You Get” in first screenshot)
At PPP, that $150 delivers $111 to the blogger and $39 to PPP as a 26% “cut” (39/150) or a 35% “markup” (39/111). Assuming a sponsor wanted 50 such posts, you should also include PPP’s $5 opp fee which would equate to $.10/post across those 50 posts — a rounding error in these calcs.

Lets put that into perspective on what I am currently charging

I currently aim to earn around $130 for each review I write, but also remember I donate 50% of those earnings to the Best WordPress Plugins Developers, voted for by my readers which gives lots of longevity to the reviews I write.

Bloggers can set their review prices cheaper and earn the same amount of money, or set their review prices slightly higher and earn more, and still offer competitive pricing.

The amount possible with the normal PayPerPost marketplace is effectively hypothetical because so far I haven’t managed to reach the higher ranking necessary for their “big green” reviews, typically PR6 or PR7 with an Alexa rating below 10,000.

I try to aim for a quality influential readership, thus my traffic does grow a little slower than many blogs, and I do tend to take a fairly controversial stance on some issues, so I might not get as many links as “populist” bloggers.

PayPerPost Direct Only Charge 10%

I have set the price I want to be paid at $130 as listed above, and advertisers will pay $143. PayPerPost get $13, and from that they have to cover the cost of credit card and Paypal processing fees.

In addition they are holding the money as a form of Escrow service, and paying me immediately upon completion. There are also some advantages when it comes to tax time for those in the US.

You will see in this screenshot below that you can set your own price. I was going to base my pricing upon the 35% markup PayPerPost normally charge (which is still cheap)

Ted set me straight on that. 10% is 10%, and anyone who wants a review will only be paying $143 of which I receive $130 (and give half of it away)

This Isn’t A Market Place For Paid Reviews

I questioned Ted quite extensively about this.

As far as Pay Per Post are concerned, if the advertiser is coming from our blog to purchase a review, they have no right to be charging a 50% or more service fee. (some competitors have a 100% markup as you can see above)

Once Pay Per Post have a few thousand of their 15000+ 25000+ bloggers setup for Pay Per Post Direct, they will also be providing a marketplace on the PayPerPost site, where Advertisers will be able to search for bloggers to write reviews and approach specific bloggers.

In that situation, because PayPerPost would be enabling the transaction, there would be a higher service fee. I would expect it would be the familiar 35% though I couldn’t pin Ted down to an exact figure – understandable, because this is a new service.

This is different to their current marketplace, which is based upon fairly broad category and traffic details.

Negotiation Interface

This just keeps on getting better. If you click on the button on my sidebar, a popup will appear to order a review. You are not taken away to a marketplace to explore other blogs who might offer on the face of it better value, but in my own mind would give an advertiser less value.

Within the main Pay Per Post interface, it is possible for the blogger and advertiser to send messages backwards and forwards and actually “haggle” over the review price.

As I mentioned in my review of Sponsored Reviews, this is something I wanted included in their service. Currently they offer a method of negotiating prices that doesn’t have a message interface. They don’t object to emailing an advertiser directly, but it is slightly inconvenient.

Giving Away Your Customers?

With that popup window, the transaction starts whilst someone is on my website. They are my customer and it is me selling them the opportunity for a review or consultation, which is how I look on many of my reviews – they are not for search engine links (I give those editorially, they are partially for buzz and qualified customers from my audience, and above all they are looking for expert feedback.

You might think that review marketplaces are really bringing me lots of review customers and I would miss their traffic.

My last review with ReviewMe was at the beginning of March. Take a look at these referral stats.

I have sent ReviewMe 400 potential customers since the beginning of March, and none of those potential customers have converted.

They may have converted into ReviewMe bloggers, but I don’t earn anything for that. They didn’t convert into advertisers, I would have been paid $25 for those.

That conversion rate is affected by 2 major factors

• I set a premium rate for my reviews so that I receive $130, but advertisers see a $260 charge
• Other blogs look more competitive because of a bug in the ReviewMe rating system in how they count Bloglines subscribers.

Sponsored Reviews aren’t without their problems either. They don’t seem to use Bloglines as a criteria, but they do use link popularity, which these days usually means Yahoo.
Yahoo currently reports more than 27,000 links to my blog. During the last month they have reported as high as 40,000, and as low as 9,000.
Not long ago on Sponsored Reviews my blog was rated a 4 and now the average is a 3. I know a lot of blogs with lower pagerank, worse Alexa and Technorati stats, and a lot less links that currently rate a 4 overall.

Sending traffic to a site which isn’t rating your site as highly as it should isn’t good business.

Thus it is hard to judge how much money I have lost but let us suppose of those 400 who clicked through to ReviewMe, a percentage were genuinely interested in buying a review from me. If I converted just 4% of those enquiries into some form of paid content, I could well have earned an additional $2000 in paid reviews over the last 3 months.

I assure you that is a lot more traffic that I have sent ReviewMe than ReviewMe has sent to me.

Buttons

PayPerPost have made a lot of buttons available, which you can customise, and you are even able to use a text link, or create your own buttons.

Couldn’t You Do This With A WordPress Plugin

Yes you could. I actually own a copy of the WordPress Bankroll Plugin, which cost me $100 when first released for an unlimited use license. I gave them a lot of feedback, and many of the features in version 2 were based upon my suggestions.

I would still use PayPerPost Direct

• They have a brand – it may be a little tarnished (wrongly), but at the end of the day someone would trust them to hold their money until I had a review written meeting the agreed upon requirements. That is an escrow type service, and is highly worthwhile.
• PayPerPost promote their bloggers extensively – I have even appeared on their blog in the past even though I haven’t written any reviews for them in the past.
• Their future marketplace I predict is going to be much larger than the other services. They have had major brands such as Hewlett Packard using their services in the past.
• I have a feeling many of the “big green” promotions, many of which were for writing about PayPerPost services will in some way also be channelled through the PayPerPost Direct service
• This is a service that I think will be highly acceptable for mainstream bloggers, and as more come onboard, more opportunities for reviews will become available. Advertisers rarely just buy one review with a service if they are looking for buzz or even for quality feedback.

That doesn’t mean I won’t use the WordPress Bankroll, it just means I will use the WordPress Bankroll plugin creatively for a purpose it is ideally suited for, but for which it was not intended.

PayPerPost – Other New Announcements

• Rating system changed – they no longer use Technorati because it isn’t very relevant (and I suppose is easily gamed)
• Time for Reviews Increased – for conventional market place reviews, there is now 6 hours to complete an accepted opportunity
• Rating System – the internal ratings system for posties has “benches” added in addition to “tack” – I don’t know too much about this but hopefully it will lead to more reliable reporting of good or bad reviewers.

How Much Did I Get Paid To Write This Glowing Review?

Not one cent!

In fact this is the kind of service I would actually be willing to Pay PayPerPost $100 for, because I know it is going to make me a lot more money.

This review contains no affiliate links, but you can find those now on the sidebar of my blog if you wish to sign up.

I have spent quite a long time writing this review, and there is now a lot more information available on the Pay Per Post blog including a cool video explaining the whole Pay Per Post Direct system, and an overview of the benefits.

The funny thing is, I doubt this new service will get a lot of coverage, because it is so good, even Michael Arrington at Techcrunch. or Jason Calacanis won’t be able to find much wrong with it.

Update:
It seems lots of people enjoyed this post, why not share it with others by
giving it a Digg

Update 2:

• I have adjusted the number of bloggers signed up with Pay Per Post, which is currently over 25000, a lot more than the 15000 I was previously aware of.
• I have added a clarification regarding the approval process. There is no waiting time or approval required for Pay Per Post Direct, you can sign up and use it the same day.
• Yesterday I modified the time required for a marketplace post to be completed from 4 hours to the as published 6 hours, which is even enough time for me to write most reviews.
• I have been reading a fair amount of questions and answers on the Pay Per Post forums (they are very active and full of help for Bloggers) – with Pay Per Post Direct there is no official time set for writing a review, but apparently an advertiser can cancel if you are taking too long to complete. I suggest you give yourself a nice large window and spend some time to write really high quality reviews that you can be proud of, and show to other advertisers.

Donations are going to be made (if possible) in large chunks of $100

This poll will not work correctly in feed readers and email

[poll=3]

Voting will be open until sometime during the morning of Friday 4th May (EST) – hopefully that will give the winner some nice additional beer money for the weekend.

Earnings to date for paid reviews: $30 + $75 + $98 + $130 = $333

The one review I did during April was for iBegin Source Business Information, so they are effectively sponsoring this round of donations.

I am covering the shortfall this time around as I know I have 2 reviews in the kitty to do this week.

That means the second giveaway will be for $100 this Friday

As discussed in the comments of the previous poll, I am carrying forward half the value of votes from the previous round, rounded up, so that votes from the previous round are not looked on as wasted votes, but still giving new plugins a chance.

For new nominations, please refer to the Best WordPress Plugins nominations page.

WordPress SEO Tips & Hacks

Subscribe to Comments Hacks – I am including this at the top of the list because it is highly important. Emails sent out from your domain could cause you problems with email delivery or spam complaints, and the plugin by default doesn’t comply with CAN-SPAM if you or someone else (a spammer) includes a marketing message in your emails.
The danger of overloading your server with emails being sent faster than your host allows is also worth thinking about. I know multiple blogs that have problems delivering all subscribed comments and I am sure the owners are not aware of this.

Just imagine you have 20 people comment on a post, and then you get 5 new comments in the space of one hour – that would put you over the limit on most shared hosting.

Mine are set up to be delivered by Gmail by SMTP – which email host is going to block Gmail totally?

Spam Karma latest release, and I also speculated that I get less spam using it than if I was using Akismet.

My Ultimate List of Dofollow Plugins first published in February still gains links on a daily basis, and has helped convert 100s of people into removing nofollow from their comments and trackbacks.
I have a followup project planned that I will launch within the next week that will provide a way of highlighting blogs that wish to be highlighted as supporting DoFollow.
The page also now includes information on how to remove NoFollow from blogs using Blogger and I hope to be able to include detailed Typepad and MoveableType instructions (I know of 3 people working on this)

How linking to social media and bookmarking sites could affect your search engine performance. The discussion that followed on is just as informative as the post.

Tagging and How Tagging Can Help SEO is one of the primary topics of this blog. I have written a lot of posts regarding the benefits of using Ultimate Tag Warrior (that is a link to the tag).
My analysis of the Google BlogSearch Patent didn’t gain a lot of links from SEO blogs, but then most SEO bloggers don’t understand the benefits of tagging and are too worried about duplicate content (another tag link)

Do you get linked to by the press? I also highlighted how bad some press agencies are with linking.

My attack on Top Commenters plugins caused some uproar. It is great to provide a way to thank the people who comment on your blog, but I prefer to do that by using DoFollow.
If you can understand my milk bottle analogy, you will go a long way to improving the SEO profile of your blog. If you do use a Top Commenters plugin, at least include it using some WordPress logic functions such as is_home() and is_single()

Top WordPress Plugins

I will be opening up the voting for the first round of my cash donations for best wordpress plugins later today (I need to decide which plugin or service to use). I am giving away real money in large chunks to help support WordPress Plugin Development.

Monetization & Blogging Tips

Warning about using Amazon Contextual Links

PayPerPost vs Jason Calacanis turned into an in depth discussion regarding ThisNext vs PayPerPost on Disclosure (you really have to read the comments)

Performancing Metrics Is a Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing for Niche Website owners and why I recommend Clicky instead.

I write a lot about disclosure in affiliate marketing and blogging. Whilst PayPerPost is constantly being highlighted, the people doing the highlighting are actually as guilty of poor disclosure and unethical practices themselves.

Maki asked a number of bloggers why they display a feed counter and I gave what I believe is the most in depth answer. There are some good tips there for those people who already have an existing mailing list to jumpstart their blog subscription for an insane amount of social proof.
Why don’t Aweber and Getresponse offer a decent email subscription to RSS feeds that reports numbers to Feedburner? Anyone who uses their services misses out on the social proof benefit.
They should also offer their own social proof icons for email subscriptions.

In some ways I hate product launch formula style marketing of services. The scarcity factor makes it hard for a potential buyer to make an informed decision despite all the proof.
Sometimes the materials left over are of huge value, and I recommend you watch the videos from Rich Schefren.

Product Reviews

Stampede Traffic

Sponsored Reviews – with this service you can negotiate with me for paid reviews :)

Volusion Shopping Cart – was I too harsh on them?
Auction Ads

Web 2.0

Is this the Future of MyBlogLog when we finally get an API? Smart internet marketers should already be planning on how the data could be best integrated into other applications.

Tips on using Reddit and Stumbleupon. The StumbleUpon post lists my membership details to a number of social networks… lets be friends. I really should include those in my sidebar.

Sometimes it is amazing the knock-on effect of what you blog about.

My How To Use MyBlogLog post sent Cord some traffic, but the important factor is the quality of traffic sent. Eric from MyBlogLog saw the post, read Cord’s 2 part guide, and then listed it on the MyBlogLog blog, along with some more tips.

I wrote a fair amount about Twitter, partially because it was the talk of the blogosphere, and partially because as with all emerging technology, there were a lot of ethical problems in using it for commercial use. The best way to read full coverage is to use my Twitter tag.

I love Technorati, but they really have problems coping with all the new kinds of RSS and micro blog services such as Twitter, and co.Comment

I had some Digg success earlier in the month, with a story I submitted to Digg actually reaching the front page. The discussion is well worth reading with some insight from Michel Fortin and others.

I didn’t write about Google’s CPA service, because everyone else was covering the subject, I just left a few comments on other people’s blogs. I don’t write about something unless I feel I can add something substantial to the conversation, even if it is highly relevant.

This is where paid posts comes into the equation, because you get paid to write your review irrespective of the number of clicks a link gets, or how many unit sales are made.

Guaranteed Income

I used to work in sales in the offline world, and most of my income was based upon sales results. Unfortunately most f the time I didn’t have a product that was ready for final sale, and the games development studio didn’t have the pedigree to close a development contract just based upon design documents.

It is always good to have some level of guaranteed income, your basic salary. The total rewards are potentially not as high, but there is that level of financial security.

Fast Payment

One of the benefits I mentioned in my review of the Sponsored Reviews service was their payment terms, with payments being made within 2 weeks.

I also mentioned that as they are part of a more established firm, Text Link Brokers, I expected payments to be made on time.

Good to their word, today I received payment, just 12 days after my review of their service which is exceptional.

Giving Away The Money

I am giving away 50% of my earnings from Sponsored Reviews, ReviewMe and Pay Per Post as donations to WordPress Plugin Developers every month, and I would still like some more nominations of who I should give the first donation to.

Notice the Added Value

My donation promotions create a huge amount of added value for the people requesting reviews, and as I continue with this donations theme over the coming months, the donations page will be come cornerstone content with lots of repeat viewers.

Hopefully the resource will become popular among WordPress enthusiast, but it also becomes a showcase for anyone interested in demonstrating ways paid posts can be written with integrity.

As always I am not a lawyer, and this is just for entertainment purposes. I am sure WOMMA have some lawyers though, so they really should take a lot more care with what they state and how they state it.

They were referencing the recent story in the LA Times about Pay Per Post and disclosure.

In the article they criticise the disclosure policy on Colleen Caldwell’s blog, which is fairly standard for Pay Per Post bloggers, a DisclosurePolicy.org badge “I disclose”, along with a disclosure policy based on their generator.

The “prominent disclosure” that PayPerPost purports? If you click on the icon in the sidebar it tells you:

The fatal flaw in their argument is that they are providing Jeff Jarvis and Jason Calacanis as examples of flawless business bloggers, and as I pointed out just a few days ago, and openly challenged, there may be no such thing as an A-Lister who has every legal and ethical concern covered.

Focusing on Orlando-based PayPerPost, Friedman notes concerns that such business models blur the ethical line between unbiased opinion and product placement. Jeff Jarvis and Jason McCabe Calacanis, two of the nation’s most respected business bloggers, are included amongst the critics.

You would expect these respected business bloggers who certainly earn a huge amount more than your typical Pay Per Post blogger, to have absolutely beyond reproach disclosure and other legal statements on their websites.

Please note that the WOMMA association and the LA Times effectively picked these two gentlemen as an example, effectively the pinnacle of excellence, because they are able to criticize Pay Per Post bloggers.

The LA Times

Why does the LA Times associate WOMM with paid reviews and not affiliate marketing. Where is all the coverage about Google Amazon or Ebay affiliates not disclosing, and not being required to explicitly?

How explicitly should sites like the LA Times declare their financial relationships with sister sites?

Smaller websites have to try to compete on a level playing field with sites that practice massive interlinking between their sister sites, and “partners”, they are all financial links.

I would link to the LA Times, but that is against their Terms of Service, which I would also link to, but again that would be breaking their terms of service, already broken by the WOMMA and Jason Calacanis (well unless they asked for specific permission)

Yes those terms of service are in the footer, but the LA Times obviously gets an exemption that work at home mothers don’t qualify for.

Jeff Jarvis

Lets take a look at Jeff Jarvis

Jeff does do a very good job of disclosure within posts, at least the few I looked for specifically about Daylife, I didn’t check all his content, it would have taken me a solid month.

Jeffs primary disclosure however is a link in his sidebar, that is only accessible from his homepage and date archives.
If you go to the “single” page of one of his posts, there are no sidebar links, and thus no link to his disclosure policy. There are also no easy to follow links from his single pages to the home page. You can follow a link to one of his tag pages (which he uses instead of categories), but that isn’t obvious.

In fact Jeffs blog layout is almost what I would regard as sacrificial SEO, intended to drive as much link equity to one particular URL.

I hope they are paying thousands for that sitewide link, certainly $3K+ a month based on the sacrificial nature of the site – I don’t know much about text link pricing in bulk, that is a guestimate, but the links are probably worth more.
I can understand why there is a WordPress sitewide link, most people publishing on WordPress give them a sitewide link, but very few would give their hosting company a sitewide link.
Jeff makes no mention of the hosting company anywhere on his site, such as saying how great they are to justify the link.

Jeff is collecting email addresses every time you place a comment, so you would expect some kind of privacy statement, especially with the amount of tracking going on.
You would also expect some kind of physical mailing address, because in some ways his blog is performing WOMM for the various businesses in which he has involvement.

Who has ownership of comments on Jeffs blog? Does he claim the right to republish or syndicate them? No comments policy in sight, though he does have an extremely limited rules of engagement, though not visible on single pages.

I didn’t look at his feed content, but most people don’t have a disclosure policy link in their feeds, and most people don’t have a physical address in case people read their feeds by email (CAN-SPAM).

Jason Calacanis

I can’t give you an example of Jason Calacanis’ disclosure policy, he hasn’t got one. In fact he has:-

I’m an “Entrepreneur in Action” at Sequoia Capital.

His about page is about his past, not about his current. It is well known that he has financial connections with www.ThisNext.com which is present all over his website without disclosure.
He is still running his blog on Blogsmith, yet supposedly he doesn’t work for AOL now, though he is probably still a shareholder… undeclared – he certainly touts everything AOL, specifically Netscape do right.

He also has tracking with Sitemeter and Google Analytics, plus more demographic data being supplied by Quantcast.
He collects email addresses, in fact you have to confirm that your email address is correct before a comment is posted. Great for spam control, but it is still personal information.
No privacy statement of any kind.

Jason’s ThisNext connection is also important, because in many ways ThisNext is a competitor to PayPerPost, and online reviews sites are not immune to problems with shilling reviews. A very recent example was the reviews Ben found yesterday on Home Depot. Disclosed paid reviews at least everything is out in the open.

When Jason attacks PayPerPost is it really just because of ethics and his concern?
He has a habit of making poorly researched statements for what is known as linkbait, another recent example was his attack on the SEO industry as a whole, which was thoroughly debunked by Danny Sullivan @ SearchEngineLand.

WOMMA Suggesting Regulation?

Now here is an interesting titbit from the WOMMA FAQ:-

5. Why aren’t there specific rules about what people say?
We work with real people, and the honest opinions that they form on their own. There is a fundamental complexity here — if you respect consumers and value their genuine opinions, than you can’t tell them what to say. We don’t script consumers; we ask them to share their opinions. Similarly, we can’t control the second- and third-generation conversations, what friends tell friends. But we can instruct them well about ethics, encourage them to be honest and open in all downstream conversations, and create a culture of ethical communications.
Some principles are absolute, however, such as our recognition that the consumer is fundamentally in control in this new environment and that marketers cannot lie or deceive.

This totally contradicts their recent statement

WOMMA will continue to monitor these issues, urging not only clear standards for ethical disclosure within sponsored blogs, but also strict guidelines on the method and mode of disclosure. Current guidelines are too weak and we therefore encourage their revision according to standards already set by the WOMMA Ethics Code.

Links Anyone?

What is with all these ethical sites and links?

The LA Times didn’t link through to Colleen’s site
Jason Calacanis quoted Colleen, but didn’t link through to her
Jason Calacanis did link to the LA Times, breaking their ToS
The WOMMA link through to a search result, and not a permalink.
WOMMA also link through to the LA Times, breaking their ToS

If you are quoting someone’s website, it is questionable practice not to link through to them with a followable link.

Conclusions

Everyone seems to be twisting stories to suit their own agenda, and no one in this discussion is 100% clean and free, and I am sure I have my own flaws. Everything I write has some level of commercial interest.

As I said just a few days ago, A List Bloggers in Crystal Palaces Shouldn’t Throw Stones, though the challenge in that post is still on if any A-Listers think they have everything covered.

I wonder if the LA Times charge more than Krak.dk for commercial deep linking without permission.

Thanks to Advertising for Success for the WOMMA link I followed.

Update:-

Dave Utter has just covered this story on Web Pro News, and I wish to thank him for highlighting the story to a more mass audience. It also shows how easy it is to make mistakes, and that maybe it is wrong to highlight a work at home mother for things that professional writers do by mistake on a daily basis. Dave though he quoted me extensively, forgot to link through to this post.

Though it is mentioned in the comments, I think it is important to highlight Ted’s recent post highlighting his discussions with the WOMMA.

Jason Calacanis continues to attack PayPerPost but have obviously read this post though wouldn’t link to it, because that would be balanced reporting, and Jason doesn’t really believe in ethical blogging, it is all just hype.

How do I know he has read this post but wouldn’t link to it?

Because he has added something to his sidebar

I would like to congratulate Jason on a minimal concession to ethical blogging, but how about some full disclosure at the head of every post about a competitor, PayPerPost, at the top of every post you write about them.
Also make sure you back date this disclosure through all the content you have previous written about them.
It is great you are going to have Ted on the Calacanis cast, but that isn’t enough to correct all the previous inbalances in your reporting.

Update2:

I have just left the following comment on Jasons most recent post regarding WOMMA. I am posting it here just in case it doesn’t appear on his blog.

I would like to congratulate you on your minimal concession to disclosure (the change in your sidebar disclosing ThisNext) but how about some unbiased reporting.
You should really include a disclosure in the first line of every post you have made about PayPerPost (a competitor), ThisNext, AOL, Weblogs Inc and Netscape (you no doubt have some financial interest still)
Surely you have the resources to do a better job of disclosure than a work at home mother.
A blogger with class, such as Robert Scoble, does link to people with differing opinion than himself, and has the balls to admit when he makes mistakes.
Where is your post stating why you changed your sidebar disclosure?

Update 3:

Just so there is no question that a change has been made, I just pulled this screenshot of Jason’s sidebar from the Google cache.

Just so there is no question that the comment I posted was posted, here is a screenshot of the results page after posting a comment. I assure you I am checking my email frequently, my emails are coming through with no problem (I use gmail), and the usual confirmation has not come through.

I would also love to highlight this previous post on Jason’s blog

Paying the top DIGG/REDDIT/Flickr/Newsvine users (or “$1,000 a month for doing what you’re already doing.”)

When Brian and I started Weblogs, Inc. the idea of paying bloggers–heck, even making money from blogging–was considered offensive to many. Blogging was, as the case was stated, a highly personal activity that should not be trivialized by the forces of commerce and greed. I don’t have a complicated relationship with money or capitalism: I love them both and see them as simply as fuel and the process by which fuel is produced. Money to me means time, time means quality, and quality means success.

Talent wins, and talent needs to get paid. I love paying talented people so they can sleep well at night doing what they love. That’s my biggest joy in business: gettin’ people paid.

The concept of “free” content producers, which I think WIRED called crowdsourcing, is going to be a short-lived joke. A loophole in the content business that will be closed by savvy startups which identify the top 5% of the audience and buy their time.

As we say in Brooklyn: everyone’s gotta eat

Update 4:

Tino Buntic has a thought provoking post on product placement, as long ago as the film “E.T.”
I bet they had some mention in the credits that it was a product placement, as films do these days, rather than a big warning sign on the screen whilst the product is visible.

Note to anyone linking through: don’t forget to use trackback, links are automatically reciprocated because I use the dofollow plugin.

Admittedly I have been a little lax with my donations to other authors, though I have invested money in plugin development, only to publish the plugins myself under a GPL license, thus in my own way giving to the community.

What I have decided to do is to donate some of the income I receive from writing paid reviews back to the WordPress community.
I currently receive $130 for a paid review, and it is my aim to give 50% of my paid review earnings to plugin authors, probably on a monthly basis.

To ensure that credit is given where credit is due, I am only going to start the ball rolling with 2 of my own personal favourites. All other suggestions are subject to an “open mike”.

Only one suggestion per person is allowed, and you are not allowed to suggest your own plugin.
Once the list reaches 20 plugins, I will open a new post for this months voting.

Each month the list will be rolled over with new suggestions added. Though we will see how workable it is to include all the suggestions in each month’s list, I reserve the right to only include a certain number from the top of the list, or to bump plugins up the list if I personally feel they are worthy of being included sooner.

There is always a variation in how much I receive for writing a review, but my aim is to make each payout “visible” – more than just beer money, so typically around $100 seems suitable.

I am going to highlight Matt Mullenweg in this post, but please understand that this isn’t a personal attack, it just highlights many of the problems that the A-listers wouldn’t recognise if they looked at their own activities.
Matt is recognised as a major influencer, and whilst it is hard to get exact numbers for various reasons, there is a good chance 2 million or more people might have had a chance to see the headline “Selling Links” in their WordPress account.

Selling Links

Links have value for as long as clicking on them will transfer visitors from one site to another, and for as long as they are used by search engines as part of their relevancy calculations.
(Links are becoming less and less relevant, especially in Google – I have seen hard evidence)

A disclosed paid link within a review is actually the most transparent link and ethically pure on the internet. Most other forms of linking do not have a disclosure of any kind, yet more often than not some kind of compensation has occurred that is not transparent

• Friends – you link to your friend, your friend might link to you
• Your employer – if your company does well, you benefit
• Promote a social media platform to your readers, and you suddenly get lots of friends on that platform, and possibly more prominence or authority.

Gone are the innocent days of the internet when people linked through to others purely based on it being good content, and that is especially true of the blogosphere. You link through to people and trackback/pingback because you want to express your views, and for other people to read them, and maybe respond in turn.

Gaming Search Engines?

The Yahoo directory has for years been a pillar of support for the Google algorithms. For over 5 years it has been paid inclusion only for commercial sites.

If I ran a blog on WordPress.com and tagged it “blogging” I would gain link equity from Robert Scoble, via the WordPress.com tagging system, whether Robert had read my post or not.

Thousands of affiliate programs gain link equity from affiliate links

WordPress.com is currently skewing Google’s index to the tune of 750,000 blogs, and thousands of tag pages.

Content Choice

People often choose content for financial reasons because they are controversial/topical and bring them more traffic and subscribers, or just to be evangelical on a particular topic.
Many sites were created to target specific subjects because they are lucrative.

Matt Mullenweg attacks PayPerPost >> Matt morally is on higher ground >> WordPress.com is an ethical service >> more WordPress.com users >> $$$

Matt doesn’t disclose that he is financially linked with WordPress in his blog posts – Who are the investors in Automattic? Does every employee at Automattic declare they work for Automattic within every blog post they write about WordPress?

Michael Arrington is at least blatantly honest that he often writes about Pay Per Post because it brings in more traffic and subscribers. The most valuable currency for Michael Arrington isn’t money, but access to information, preferably before anyone else.

Why don’t solutions to disclosure get more links? I have invested time and money into developing solutions for disclosure. I think my disclosure policy plugin site has so far generated approximately 10 links from bloggers, and 21 unique blogs according to Technorati, though some of it is syndication, feed errors or splogs.

People attack paid post companies because they have no intent to receive a pay check from them. In the same post Matt highlighted, a mother of 2 in the comments has technical problems using the Pay Per Post disclosure, and that is affecting the income she needs.

What a great gift to mankind, we have more pseudo ethical commercial blogs, but increase poverty by imposing ethical stigmas on services that provide income for people that need it.

Disregard for Legal Issues

In the wphackers mailing list a while back I suggested that WordPress should contain some boiler-plate legal terms, and the idea was effectively shot down. I know that legal jurisdiction would make them more complicated, but GPL seems to be usable worldwide.

WordPress.com didn’t even have a terms of service when it went live, let alone during beta, and how many bloggers have a privacy policy for all those email addresses they are collecting? In the UK there is the Data Protection Act, I am not sure of the US equivalent. Can you comply with that if you use a blogging service provided by a 3rd party?

MyBlogLog was recently attacked for not having a clear ToS and for cancelling the account of one person without warning. WordPress.com do that on a daily basis.

Who owns the comment content on a blog? How is a blog owner allowed to use the comment content? What rights to moderation?

There are blogs on WordPress.com that have been publishing content with affiliate links for over a year – I have even seen them listed on the front page.

WordPress.com uses a lot of tracking, not only on the main site, but also on the subdomains of blog owners. I have never seen a privacy statement on any wordpress.com hosted blog, then again I have never seen a privacy statement on blogspot hosted blogs either that gave details about what they were tracking. Does a blog owner have the option not to have all the demographic data of their blog visible?

Affiliate Marketing

Clickbank only recently changed their terms to include a mention of disclosure being required, but this is not the case for other affiliate program whose members practice word of mouth marketing. In fact they are not specific, they just require what is required by the FTC.
PayPerPost currently require more than is probably required by the FTC, and certainly much more than is practiced by 95% of affiliates.

Why are Pay Per Post getting a hard time over disclosure?

Examples of Ethical Paid Reviews

• I wrote a review for Arron Wall’s SEO Glossary – I have made as much from the affiliate links as from the review itself, and it got me a link from Aaron’s blog – how cool is that?
• Volusion Shopping Cart Review – In my opinion I went into as much depth as was possible for a service with so many features, and didn’t pull any punches about features I felt needed improvement.
• Review of the Sponsored Reviews Service – I tried to provide as much information as possible, and highlighted things I would like improved.

In every case the company requesting the review gained more than buzz or a link, in fact with all 3 companies the link they gained wasn’t even a concern, and a drop in the ocean.

Each one of these reviews

• Was on topic for this blog
• Unbiased
• Well received by my readers

It would be easy to point out that there are bloggers that will write reviews that are rushed affairs, and just mention the product in passing.
You get what you pay for, and in my case I try to make every review I write “cornerstone content”. If I can’t write something unique and original about a product or service, I generally won’t even mention it, no matter how much I am offered.
I actually turned down a $150 review yesterday for ethical reasons – I had received manual comment spam from people promoting the product.

There are also affiliates that write glowing reviews of products that they have only read the sales page for, but no one would dream of attacking Clickbank, Linkshare or Commission Junction over this. Google in many ways prevent disclosure for their referral units.
Have you seen fake book reviews with links to Amazon? That is obviously Amazon’s fault, and last time I looked Amazon didn’t require disclosure.

Would WordPress Exist Without Paid Links?

How many WordPress contributors make money for their contribution from paid links either in the sidebar of their blog, or within the content? 80%? 90%?
I am sure every single one of them makes more money from paid links than donations.

Suggested Reading

Seriously? Every single post on this blog tagged with Disclosure and a lot of the posts tagged nofollow

Personal Challenge

Give me any^[1] A List blog, and I will find problems with their disclosure or legal terms, on a paid post consultancy basis through either Sponsored Reviews or ReviewMe.
I should note that I am not a lawyer, so this is for entertainment purposes, and anything I point out could well be subject to interpretation and there is no guarantee. Also note that the review would be published on this blog without prior approval, and that rates will be increasing to $200 soon.

That is nothing compared to the hourly rate of many WordPress consultants. I can’t advise on code solutions for platforms other than WordPress. Review length will really depend on what I have to work with.

If I can’t find anything wrong, you will get a free review that I will publish anyway.

[1] I won’t link to content that is in my opinion inappropriate for this blog

Oh, and to make this really interesting, you don’t have to be the blog owner to order a review.

In closing, no one is perfect, and that includes myself – I have only just added a privacy statement and it is not formally worded.

Scandal

Write scandalous or convenient half-truths to fire up a link and traffic fest in the blogosphere, gain subscribers and push contextual or niche adverts at them.

Advertorial With Disclosure

In many ways a paid post or an advertorial is a more honest form of content monetization than conventional advertising. All the cards are on the table in clear sight.
As long as there is clear disclosure and the content is relevant and interesting to your readership, there is nothing wrong with the occasional paid post.

Paid Reviews

In fact paid reviews can be one step better than advertorials in magazines, because a blogger can choose to treat the review as if they were hired in a consulting role, and are publishing the results

Example of a Paid Review

Here is an example of a paid Review I have just written for Volusion

• There is not even a hint of the paid review affecting my opinion
• There is no question of bias towards the product
• I have provided what I feel is constructive criticism that will hopefully help improve the service for both current and future customers

They could always hire a “consultant” to tell them something similar for $2000 per hr, or maybe pay a marketing company to set up a focus group.

Why not pay a college student $20 to fill out a 1hr survey or questionnaire about a product they would never use?

Asking a blogger for a real opinion about a product, and being willing to pay them some compensation for the time invested is a very worthwhile method of gaining feedback, and is not buying opinion.

Please don’t give me the SEO argument either, Volusion have 1000s of links and the few they would receive from this review or any others are really insignificant.

Hmm, I think I might join up with Pay Per Post and with their new affiliate program get people to write reviews of the review I did of Volusion for ReviewMe.

It is five years, almost to the day that Yahoo started charging $299 per year for a listing in their directory as this article on Pandia clearly illustrates.

The main benefit of being in the Yahoo directory isn’t traffic, it is pagerank / trustrank. Who actually uses the Yahoo directory for anything other than listing their own sites?
It is many years since I went to Yahoo to lookup an entry for anything other than a competitor in a niche.

In all those 5 years, I haven’t heard anyone suggest that Yahoo should use “nofollow” for all the directory listings. All commercial websites don’t have a free option to get listed.

It is widely believed that a Yahoo directory listing is given a significant search engine weight.

Commercial Internet

Big business has a huge advantage over the little guy on the internet. Lets take Ebay as an example.

Many shoppers wouldn’t realise it, although the relationship is made very clear, that Epinions.com is owned by Shopping.com, which is itself owned by Ebay.com.
There is lots of interlinking between the different sites, though it could be achieved in a much more search engine friendly way. There is certainly no clear notification by every link that money is being made on every purchase.

Whilst reviews are user generated, there is certainly editorial control over which products are positioned prominently to maximise sales.

2006 in Perspective

Bloggers have been victimising PPP and to a lesser extent Reviewme.

Google, who claim to “do no evil” are actively discouraging paid posts and paid links from small services. They are suggesting that “nofollow” should be used to denote paid links, rather than their previous intent, untrusted sites (for various reasons).

Google unfortunately made paid links from Yahoo “saintly” since the beginning of their existence. It is only $300 and Yahoo receive payment even if they don’t include your site.
Google don’t regulate major corporations from cross-linking commercially.

During 2006 I have seen Google likened to God.

2007 A Reality Check?

My hope is that bloggers come down to earth a little, because the ranting and raving about paid posts is really displaying quite clearly how narrow-minded they are.

Paid posts and paid links give the little guy a chance to make some money writing about and linking to relevant content. They give the site linked to a greater chance of competing with the massive corporate machines as well as valuable feedback.

There is recent news that PayPerPost have acquired Performancing metrics. Nick at Performancing can be blunt, crude and highly opinionated. He is also a damn smart and ethical guy.
If you have been listening to his recent podcasts, you would know that he has been looking for someone to take metrics onboard for quite some time, as it was a money sink, and he was also talking to VC Dan Rua.
I have mentioned in the past that I have nothing but respect for the PPP guys. The PPP guys didn’t create any scandal, bloggers did it themselves. PayPerPost didn’t object to the free publicity, but in all the comments I have seen made by PPP guys in response to huge amounts of criticism, they have made some quite compelling counter arguments, and taken any criticism as genuine feedback.

I have seen people suggesting that they are going to be immediately cancelling their Performancing metrics accounts for ethical reasons.
Almost every advertiser and affiliate network you work with on your sites is gathering data. PayPerPost seem to have some smart guys backing them with VC funding.

PayPerPost are a business. With VCs backing them, they are not going to take risks in regard to personal data.

Why should PPP be compelled to enforce disclosure when Yahoo doesn’t proclaim “These are paid links?”

From what I have seen of PPP opportunities, they are in the main not for product reviews. It is quite possible they would be totally unaffected by the recent FTC / WOMMA discussion.

Create Great Content and Links Will Follow?

Give it time… maybe. Most websites don’t attract a lot of natural linkage. You can get a few links from various directories for free, though many more require payment – paid links are evil remember?

You can also gain lots of links from things like article marketing or press releases.

But that isn’t the natural linking Google say you should be looking for, to your great content, though I suppose a few sites pick up articles and press releases manually, most collect them automatically based by category of keyword searches.

# natural links per post = blog readership / 1000

That is a very rough figure because many blogs gain far more links, and many gain far less.

Techcrunch doesn’t gain 140 links for every post they make, and I gain more than one link on average for every 5 posts. Then again a large number of the links I gain are from splogs picking up tags used on Technorati.
There seems to be a critical mass for the number of links a single post can expect to receive unless it is exceptional linkbait.

Pay For Your Traffic

You can pay Google $0.15 for some traffic. If 1 in 1000 visitors decides to link to you then that link cost you $150. Hopefully you can convert some of the traffic into customers or subscribers because otherwise that is a horrendous cost, paid to Google as an alternative to natural search.

Who gains more money if paid links and sponsored content is condemned?

Trust and Duplicate Content

Linking through to someone is most of the time a statement of trust. You are sharing your visitors, subscribers, and maybe your customers with the other site. If you link through to them it should always be a followable link, unless you don’t trust them.

Google recommend always linking through to the original source if you syndicate content so they can determine the origin. The same would be true for any quotations. If you quote anything from a site, you should thus always use a followable link.