Companies already pay for hosted pages, why not pay for hosted white papers or product catalogues?

On the negative side, PDFs when distributed virally might end up pointing to old resources, and it is hard to track them if you use direct links to resources. You should always at the very least use a redirect link with a 301, but preferably something with built in tracking.

Best practice? Always have lots of links in every PDF you create

As I wrote in my initial preview of SocialSpark, there will be new metrics for gauging the authority and influence of a blog, to help determine advertising spend, not only based upon traffic and demographics, but also on past performance with CPM and CPC data also being made available.

With SocialSpark, any required links will be nofollow, though there is an option for editorial links without a nofollow.

All the negotiation about a particular campaign will be 100% transparent, thus there will be an audit trail to prove that an advertiser didn’t require specific linking, and that audit trail will be open for public, or search engine approval.

There will be full disclosure within each post, with a link though to that 100% transparent audit trail, far exceeding any stipulations or recommendation from either the FTC or WOMMA.

Advertisers will no longer be able to require a positive tone, everything will be neutral, bloggers can write what they want, but that may affect click-through rates and return on investment.

Based upon this, everything seems at least on the surface to be everything a search engine would want to see and encourage.

This Isn’t Going To Work

At least not without some cooperation from Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and Ask.

Other than the 100% transparency, a lot of this has really been available using the PayPerPost Direct system introduced by Izea 6 months ago.

Whilst on the surface the form for PayPerPost Direct suggests that advertisers were able to make specific requests for the tone, and specify linking, PayPerPost direct also provided a negotiation interface.

In many ways you can look on the initial order process as being purely suggestions, and the real final negotiated terms were often vastly different to any initial enquiry.

That was certainly the case for every review I wrote, yet I still received a PageRank penalty

In some cases I even finished the negotiation process, but just didn’t have time for a full review, so declined or gave a quick link for free.

But I have still received a penalty to my Google Toolbar PageRank, either -1 or possibly -2

A totally open system, with absolute disclosure and a full audit trail is the ideal scenario for internet users, and the search engines really have to make a choice, embrace the openness, or everything IS GOING TO GO UNDERGROUND.

PageRank Is STILL In The Equation

You will notice on the following exclusive screenshots that PageRank is still being displayed on the new interface, and Ted tells me that a final decision as to whether Alexa and PageRank will remain is still to be made.

If it does remain, I would hope they are looked at as the least important statistic, those used to find new publishers who haven’t been using the SocialRank code on their site for long enough to generate reliable statistics.

Difficult Choices

Both search engines and bloggers have difficult choices to make in the coming months.

The PayPerPost MarketPlace represents 11,000+ Advertisers and 85,000+ Bloggers, and I am sure that is set to increase.

It is noticeable that only a fraction of even PayPerPost bloggers have actually received some kind of penalty, and those are typically ones who were prominent in the PayPerPost Direct marketplace.

The funny or sad thing is that there has been a lot of collateral damage. As an example take Rob’s situation. To my knowledge he has never written a review for PayPerPost, yet is listed in the marketplace, mainly just to check out the system.
As far as I can see, and I have been reading his blog since he had just 3 subscribers, he also doesn’t sell links, hell he doesn’t even link to his own niche sites from his blog.

Rob’s PageRank took a -2 penalty purely from association

Thousands Of Sites Remain Unpunished

There are plenty of sites that are selling PageRank pasing 125×125 advertising spots that have slipped under the radar, yet sites such as SERoundTable and Search Engine Journal have been quite obviously targeted.

I know sites where Matt Cutts is a frequent visitor, and has even read paid reviews which have not had a penalty to their Google Toolbar PageRank applied.
The reviews were not “under the radar” but written by an authority in the topic being discussed.

There are many very prominent sites who every week, or every month blatantly thank their sponsors in what amounts to a post just full of PageRank passing links with no other content.
At one time these pages contained at least an introductory paragraph for each one, but often you will just see 8 or 10 links with no other content.

Time For An Olive Branch

Isn’t it easier for search engines to encourage good practice that is accountable, than to punish sites indiscriminately or based on some level of personal bias.
Without doubt there is bias and double standards in penalties that so far have been applied, and this is not a purely automatic process.

To finish here are a couple more exclusive screenshots to wet your appetite, featuring some of the statistics available in the new interface, and what appears to be a search result.

There are some great speakers scheduled, and some announcements coming later in the day.

A great feature is the ability to ask the speakers questions from the chatroom.

I wasn’t able to go to Vegas for Blogworld or Postiecon, but fortunately Postiecon are on the ball and are providing a way for anyone to learn something from the expert line up of presenters.

The widgets in this post will most likely not work in a feed.

A static page with the chat room and the video side-by-side for widescreen viewing is also now available.

If you decide to share this with your blogging audience please link to this original post with a trackback so you get the benefit of a link back to you. There are no trackbacks from the static widescreen page.

PostieCon Schedule

Here is the full schedule grabbed from the PostieCon site

Current Time In Vegas

PostieCon Live Ustream Feed

PostieCon Chatroom

The success rate was marginal because although lots of people clicked on the links in a fairly short period of time, I had a very poor conversion rate.
The biggest failing was that all they presented to a user after they clicked through was a subscription box, effectively the same as if you clicked “signup” on the PayPerPost site.

Here is what the old landing page looked like:-

Improved Landing Pages For PayPerPost RMP Units

Today, as Vlad mentioned his poor success rate with the RMP units, I took another look to see if there has been any changes made with the latest big PayPerPost update, which also introduced PayPerPost Direct.

I was greeted by this

I think that is a big difference don’t you?

Key points:-

• Bullet Points – they detail the step-by-step process on how it works, and what you have to do to get paid. This was a very confusing process before as Vlad pointed out, and of the 3 people I know who signed up for me in the past, he was the only one who actually completed the process. During Vlads signup I remember exchanging 4 or 5 emails, and Vlad is an experienced affiliate used to signing up with lots of sites and navigating his way around.
• Improved Form – It is similar to the one I have on my sidebar on the front page, though it looks much better here than it does on my site (I need a narrower version)
• Benefits – showing benefits is a great way to increase conversions. They are much better than a feature list
• Trust – those trust marks might seem insignificant, but I have seen multiple studies which prove that they can increase conversion by a large factor, and in eye tracking tests it is proven that people actually look for such logos before taking action.

Room for improvement? Always…

• Earnings Disclaimer – this might not be legally required, because they are not selling anything, but it would be a nice thing to have, and it would be possible to include instructions again for how RMP works
• Qualification – in the past, it was possible for people to sign up, only to not qualify because their blog wasn’t old enough, didn’t have date archives etc. – I think that needs to be made clear with a very clear bullet pointed popup which has a link through to the full terms
• PayPerPost Direct – so someone signs up with RMP, and then doesn’t qualify, but goes on to use the PayPerPost Direct Service – will that ever qualify as an affiliate conversion?
• Conversion Tracking – I would like to be able to track specific sources of traffic and handle any masking myself – provide me with a raw link onto which I can add my own parameters, and for those to appear in the PPP console. In fact the same is true for the normal affiliate program as well
• Proactive followup – I know Vlad went through a lot of teething problems, it would be great if there was a proactive followup of a signup with an nice email series – maybe it is there, but it is hard for me to test without creating a fake account.

I really hope they will be doing some split testing as well

Benefits For Including “Review My Post

• Links – You Get Links From Related Content – they are real links generally from blogs who have readers, and because they are reviewing your post it has to be related, even if they disagree with you (which is great as well) – it is a deep link to your content because it has to be a review of your post.
• Money For The Reviewer – $7.50 – yes it is incentive based linking, but that is something for which PayPerPost foot the bill as they get a new blogger who might take other opportunities
• Money for Yourself – $7.50 – The money the reviewer is gaining is actually half of what you would receive with a normal affiliate conversion ($15), but you are gaining a link and valuable feedback at the same time

On the negative side, Matt Cutts would say that this is polluting the internet, and that $7.50 fee for someone taking the time to write about you is the deadliest of Google Sins.

In fact he wouldn’t say it, because it is very hard to pin Matt down for specific examples of paid links, as I have tried to do in the past with no response from anyone at Google.

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.

This is my personal blog. The views expressed on these pages are mine alone and not those of my employer.

Disclaimers are strange things…

Matt can basically discuss anything he likes, whether true, false or possibly true in the future, without his parent company being held liable for anti-competitive practices. It would be very interesting to see if that disclaimer would hold up in court, with Matt being head of the Webspam department.
On his unofficial blog he is in the position to cause an awful lot of financial damage to a lot of very well funded startups, and a fair number of massive internet corporations.

Google is in a Monopoly Position

Whilst everyone has a choice about which search engine they use, they have a significant market share of search traffic, and also a significant market share of the website monetization market, recently increased by the acquisition of DoubleClick (there is an agreement in place, but paperwork isn’t finalised)

What is a Paid Link?

We shouldn’t really think about whether a specific link is paid for, but whether there is a monetary benefit in making the link to another site.

Matt Cutts is an employee and probably has a lot of stock options in Google, yet constantly links through to his employer, from which Google benefit.
Microsoft bloggers frequently blog about Microsoft launches, and even have a mailing list set up.
Yahoo employees blog about Yahoo sites.

If you are a large corporation there are a number of ways to get millions of inbound links.

• Have an affiliate program – use clever redirects on the affiliate links – Google and specifically Matt Cutts has never suggested people report sites that contain affiliate links that are not blocked from being crawled by search engines.
• Buy websites with massive link equity – how much is The Internet Movie Database worth to Amazon from an SEO perspective? Shopping.com and Epinions.com were Ebay purchases. When you go to these sites there isn’t a nofollow link in sight.
• Create Widgets – there are tons of widgets that pass on link equity

Once a large corporation has a lot of existing link equity, it is easy for them to pass this on to money generating sites and services.

Companies are allowed to buy links from the Yahoo directory, which is well known to confer a large amount of trust to a domain, and has been propping up Google’s algorithms for years.
Will we soon see Google state that the Yahoo directory should be made nofollow for all paid inclusions? Matt Cutts has previously stated that the Yahoo directory is OK because there is editorial review.

Matt Cutts has been speaking out saying he agrees with Matt Mullenweg on Sponsored Themes.
A company is paying a theme author as a subcontractor to create and maintain a WordPress theme, and there is attribution to the designer, and the company paying for the work.
Maybe it is a charitable contribution and the designer chose to include a link as a thank you.

How many consultants provide links through to the companies they work for?

How many software firms provide links through to their major corporate clients?

If you make a donation to someone, and they decide to give you a link back, is that a paid link?

If you are a consultant, and are paid to analyse a company, but to make the findings known publicly, are you supposed to stick nofollow on all the links?

If you are a VC or Angel investor, should you have to use NoFollow linking through to companies in your investment portfolio?

Are developers working on an open-source project allowed a link back to their sites (cough WordPress), and then use that link equity to dominate search engines on whatever topic they please?

If you are a blog network, or large internet content producer, is it gaming Google to have links to your sister sites, whether there is a direct financial connection or not?
An interesting twist on this is the WPNI Blogroll. They are providing link equity to the members who are then showing adverts – even if the adverts weren’t converting, would you carry them for the links and traffic?

Should a not for profit organisation link through to their paid members with a live link? One of the benefits is always being included in the members directory, and not just for traffic. These are often high quality credible relevant links, and easy to buy.

A large number of WordPress developers have paid links on their personal sites, as do theme and plugin developers.

If you write a blog post, thanking your sponsors, should you use nofollow?

Some people give away prizes for links, or offer some kind of reciprocation. Links have value, and Google invented the value of a followable link, not webmasters.

If you are a expert in a particular field, and someone asks you to write a review of their site, and the type of review you write means that writing that content might take 10 hours of your time to do due diligence, is it wrong to accept some kind of monetary contribution?
In such a situation, why would you be forced to use nofollow on all links to the site being reviewed?
I guarantee I spend a lot more time on a paid review than someone working for Yahoo for their paid directory.

Imagine someone created a commercial Wikipedia, and paid $5 for every link made to it.
You might think that is crazy, but 100,000,000 links with good anchortext would create a website that would rank for almost any term imaginable, and the company would be worth far more than $1bn, and would certainly bring in more than $100,000,000 revenue each year.
There is another evil twist you could add to the mix as well…

Sickened

I have read through the comments on Matts blog from where this is being orchestrated.

Why is it coming from Matt’s blog and not the Google Webmaster blog?

Why the focus on the effect of paid links and reviews for small webmasters rather than on the major corporations?

This is like a witch hunt with a disclaimer attached

Where is the precise definition of a paid link?

Biting The Bullet

I am actually proud of the paid reviews I have written, and I am so confident that they are not webspam, I am going to “bite the bullet”.

I have already submitted The Matt Cutts blog as webspam, because he is frequently linking through to his employer with undisclosed links.

Now I am doing what many would think of as being unthinkable, I am submitting my own content to Google’s Webspam form

Here is what I have just submitted to Google

paidlink

I am submitting my own content, because it is my own strong belief that there is nothing “webspam” related to the paid reviews I write, and am willing to submit them for scrutiny.

http://andybeard.eu/2007/03/sponsored-reviews-now-live-in-depth-review.html
http://andybeard.eu/2006/12/search-engine-glossary.html
http://andybeard.eu/2007/03/volusion-review-and-suggestions.html

I should also note I also give away half my earning from those reviews to WordPress plugin developers.

I would love an official response that I can publish stating whether Google has any problems with the quality of work I have done for my clients, or the fact that I include live followable links in the reviews I write.

Do you think I am going to get an official response?

Do Google employees have the balls to decide whether something is spam, or will they just blame it on their algorithms?

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.

It should also be noted that many of the bloggers needing a link to their disclosure policy from their feed content also needed a solution.

So I have created a simple Disclosure Policy Feedflare

The code is written to point to a page with a page slug or equivalent of “disclosure-policy”

<FeedFlareUnit>
	<Catalog>
<Title>Disclosure</Title>
<Description>Links to the Disclosure Policy</Description>
</Catalog>
	<FeedFlare>
<Text>Disclosure Policy</Text>
<Link href="${../a:link[(@rel='alternate' or not(@rel))]/@href}/disclosure-policy/" />
</FeedFlare>
</FeedFlareUnit>

Don’t copy the code from here, but use the links on the Feedburner Feedflare Library page.

For WordPress users, the feedflare should work should work without any modification
For users of other platforms, you might need to make a few changes, and host the feedflare on your own site.
I haven’t figured out a way to use this with either the new or the old blogger unless you host on your own domain. Blogger users however no longer have an excuse regarding moving to their own domain, as blogger allows you to redirect flawlessly now – no more need for meta refresh hacks. They could also store the feedflare on another domain.
Many other platforms allow you to upload various document files, hopefully they also allow you to upload XML, and you can create a modified XML file with whatever permalink structure your blogging platform uses.

This should be an ideal feedflare for people doing paid reviews for PayPerPost, ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews etc, and also for affiliate marketers trying to conform to FTC Word of Mouth Marketing legislations.

For an example disclosure policy, you might like to try DisclosurePolicy.org