Jody, a member of the marketing team at Pay Per Post asks the posties which they prefer: More money or opportunities to hawk “cool” things. Evidently, one of the challenges for the marketing team is to convince advertisers that if they want the better bloggers to snap up the opportunities, they need to offer enough money.
As she describes it, Advertisers tend to see things this way:
Some of the Advertisers feel that by providing the Posties with unique content and assets, the Posties will be able to create a more compelling post and therefore have a blog that stands out when compared to their peers.
Seriously, do Advertisers really think advertising opportunities help a postie (aka publisher) create posts that make the postie’s blog stand out from other blogs? I mean… I’m falling on the floor laughing.
Well, maybe that’s not quite fair, because advertisers sometimes offer nifty copyrighted content; for example, they might offer a cool movie trailer. The advertiser knows the trailer is nifty and entertaining. They know that if the blogger didn’t have permission, they couldn’t run that content.
Sounds great to the advertiser. In fact, they can’t understand why a blogger might not just run the ad for free, free, free!
So, why isn’t this something a blogger would just run for free? Well, here are four reasons I can think of why I often won’t run content advertiser might consider super-neato-cool: A movie trailer for a horror flick.
1. My knitting blog is not “all ads, all the time” blog. The movie maker (and most people) may think this is dull stuff. But, the knitting articles I write for absolutely free are the “compelling content” that draws my audience.
Do you want to see an example? Visit PomPom Neckline Haiku.. That’s the real content of my knitting blog,. I know you don’t “get” it. But, let me assure you, the constant stream of nearly unknittable, unwearable items that have appeared in knitting magazines draws quite a few knitters.
Yes, I can advertise your movie, technological widget, baby clothes or anything else. Knitters watch movies, blog, create myspace web pages and do all sorts of things. Some knitters will enjoy the trailer. They will come to the movie. They may even blog about the movie.
But unless your movie trailer shows Julia Roberts knitting, the trailer isn’t going to make my knitting site stand out from other knitting blogs.
2. Incorporating a movie, or widget, or any other high tech gizmo into a blog takes time and effort. The advertiser may think this is trivial.
But let me tell you, he’ll stop thinking it’s trivial when he looks at the blog posts and sees the entire display broken because the blogger didn’t know how to resize to fit the oversize video in the template. (Oh, and guess what, the post may display on some browsers but not others! So, it may just look crappy on 1/2 the blogs out there.)
If the advertiser doesn’t pay well, and the movie trailer doesn’t fit my niche very, very, very well, I’m not taking the opportunity. But someone will. And that person may take your $5 and create a the biggest buzz-killinest promo you have ever seem.
Or, they might do a great job. After all, that movie trailer may fit someone’s niche perfectly. There are, after all, blogs that discuss movies. (But, hey, advetizers, you’d pay real money or swag if you knew the ad was going to run on a very highly ranked movie blog, right? In fact, your PR department is already sending them DVD’s for free, right?)
3. Videos and widgets make a blog load slowly. Unless that video is really good, and grabs attention in the first two seconds of screening, my visitors aren’t staying to watch the movie. ( So, here’s a tip: If you want this to display on my blog, the freeze screen should show be a close of up the knitting held in Julia Roberts hands.)
4. Getting permission to display copyrighted material sounds great if you wanted to display it in the first place. But why would bajillions of bloggers want to display a movie trailer? What’s in it for the blogger?
Let’s face it: Any movie trailer offered in a blog advertising opportunity is not offered to my blog only. People surfing the web will find the same trailer on other blogs who are also paid to post the trailer. In fact, if the web surfers use google, they will find the trailer on the advertiser’s blog. That’s the whole point of paying bloggers to post links to the advertiser’s blog!
So, unless the movie trailer fits my niche, neither my blog traffic, rank or SEO benefit from the movie trailer!
Well, I think these four reasons are enough to show a realistic advertiser that as, nice as trailers, videos, and posters (or for that matter widgets, contests of products are) may be, advertising opportunities will rarely drive traffic to any particular blog.
Neat opps may be able to offer a little less money than opps for mortages, credit cards of diet products, but they can’t offer a lot less.
I would just rather see some interesting topics. Yeah, sure I can blog about morgage companies but I think I’ll pass on those.
Oh, you bet! I do have a different cut off for mortgage/ credit card etc. I’ll take $10 for other things. I require $16 for the mortgage / credit. And even then I won’t take a financial product offer if I ran another one as my last PPP post!
Great post Lucia. You’ve expanded on what I was trying to say in my comment on the PPP blog.
Like most of the people who write paid posts I work with PPP and other paid blogging companies -
1. to make a bit of money, however, I don’t want to ruin my blogs with content or add ins that junk it up and don’t fit.
2. One of the benefits of this has been, other than monetary, is that it gives me more things to write about on my blogs. If you’re suffering from writers block one day simply go and find a paid post that fits with your blogs topics and you have instant content for your site.
I try to find paid posting topics that fit my blogs. A couple of my blogs are fairly general so I can get away with a wider range of paid posts that perhaps you can on your knitting blog, but I do have niche blogs that I try very hard to find paid posts that work well with that particular blogs topic.
I don’t like having to sign up for services, forums, or downloading products in order to complete my review. Not for PPP anyway since there is only an hour to write a post. There is just not enough time to thoroughly research a site, install widgets in sidebars, join services and wait for a confirmation email and write the post.
Most of the widgets that we’ve been offered, as well as videos do not really go well with my sites. I don’t choose paid posts that have those type of requirements very often. In fact, some of the images that we must include in our paid posts don’t go well with my blogs either.
I’d rather be told that I can pick something from the site and then I can size it or even alter it graphically in Photoshop so that it really fits the style of my blog.
There’s plenty of content on the web that I can use on my blog free of charge if I want to. I’m not in this to do favors for advertisers. What are they doing for me?
One comment on that PPP post mentioned that people are using Tivo and DVR’s to tape shows and as a result can skip through commercials easily. I’m one of those people. I barely ever have to watch a television commercial and I’m quite pleased that I don’t have to. So, advertisers should also be aware that they need to find new ways to reach the public, and since blogs are popular and a new medium in which to advertise they should be embracing this new way of doing things rather than finding ways to do it as cheaply as possible.
I mean, you said it yourself. An entertainment blog with a PR of 6 or 7 is likely paid quite well by the entertainment people to advertise upcoming movies and events, as well as leak a bit of gossip here and there. Why should bloggers with slightly lower PR also get some decent pay to do the same thing?
I have a friend who tells me her husband gets free DVD’s for upcoming movies. He has a niche movie blog (but I don’t know the name of the blog! )
On the joining services, downloading widgets etc.: I’ve never taken an opp where I had to do that; I never will. Even if you join, an hour is not enough time to tell if it’s any good!