For those who haven't noticed yet I have gotten rid of that weird "thing" that was holding a $50 review offer on my blog and just streamlined the channels through which you can now get me to write about your product or website.
An advertiser has three options to get me to talk about them, through ReviewMe, Sponsored Reviews and the recently launched {like today} PPP Direct. This is an extensive review so hang in there OK, and yes this is a unbiased sponsored presentation*.
PPP Direct, eh?
Basically packaged in a line of code, that you can insert in your blog template, along with a badge or text link {like on my sidebar} it lets advertisers buy a direct sponsored review on your blog. Go ahead click on it and you will see for yourself. An in blog pop up shows up that lets an advertiser enter all the details about what the post is about and the URL to link to along with anchor text that the advertiser would like. They set the min. words, post type and tone {all conditions are negotiable}.
The minimum offer for this blog is $20 {for now}, however, if an advertiser would like to offer more they are welcome to do so. This might be helpful for advertisers who want to avoid any sort of back and forth negotiation which a blogger can initiate after the offer is received in their email or PPP dashboard.
The blogger then goes over the opp with options to accept, reject, negotiate or ban the advertiser altogether. So a lot of power is handed over to the blogger here. The best part about all this is there really is no expiration date, not that I noticed, unlike SR or RM where they give anywhere from a week to 3 days to complete the reviews. Of course it's expected that would do the review asap so you can get paid!
Finishing an Opp
You simply write it up, disclosure is required, and submit the post title and URL along with rating the offer from a 1 to 5 and submit your post. Once the advertiser sees it they approve it and you get paid immediately, another plus point, no waiting time. If the advertiser doesn't approve in 4 days it gets approved automatically and you get your cash. You still have to go by all of PPP TOS, I presume, which is to intersperse with non paid posts between all paid posts.
So far, so good.
Advertisers, will they ever find me?
Well, it all depends on your blog. Not every advertiser is a person in a suit with a myspace.com like website behind them. I've done so many opps for websites and web products that probably don't have more than a couple of employees, or any if even?
So even though PPP Direct isn't directly tied to a marketplace it is in the works. I can compare this to say a video site that just wants to make sure that they have their site working with all sorts of functions and a big user base before really getting into the ballgame, you know like YouTube did.
Now, I'm not a PPP evangelist and even though I may not get any offers at all from having the link on my site, RM hasn't got me any yet and SR is the number two money earner on this blog, I want to look into the future with this and think in the end it might actually be beneficial for me.
Of course from the opps that I do take on PPP's present marketplace the advertiser can initiate an offer outside of the marketplace with me, as they do visit blogs that take their opps. Also, I have a 5 star rating, the highest, so I must be doing something right.
Benefits over other Marketplaces
The overhead is very low over here it's just a measly 10% to the advertiser. 5% of which goes to CC and Paypal charges on PPP's end. So their is a strong chance that an advertiser will like to use PPP for their blog marketing campaign over ReviewMe or SponsoredReviews. Of course that is if they ever came by my blog or when PPP launches a direct buy marketplace.
ReviewMe charges a 100% markup to an advertiser while SponsoredReviews gives you 65% of total price the advertiser pays.
Also I would like to note here that even though a lot of people are saying negative things about this, I'm staying neutral. Like all good businesses everything must evolve and change so when a new system or feature is put in place the best method to figure out if it rocks or sucks is - TIME.
I'm going to give it some time before I form a real concrete opinion about this. But when they do launch a direct buy marketplace I'm sure I'll be getting a lot of offers as PPP, by far, has the biggest advertiser base out of all of the paid to blog services out there.
Negatives
The advertiser might have to do a lot of footwork {read browsing} to get more blogs to review their product.
However...
...the positives could be that
- An advertiser can request a follow up post from a previous sponsored one,
- An advertiser can do a series of posts with a specific blog,
- An advertiser can really specifically target their posts to specific blogs - as bloggers in PPP's present marketplace do get banned by certain advertisers for any number of reasons
But, silly...
Why wouldn't an advertiser just contact me directly and I take all the money for myself? Well sometimes it's about relationships, if somebody gave you a head start I think it is only fair to repay some of it back. Plus with the system that they have set up I do not have to deal with other headaches like collecting payment or a no show advertiser.
I've had an instance already where somebody got a hold of my MSN account contacted me for a series of sponsored posts and then just abruptly disappeared after he found out my ethnic origin! WTH! That's just one case I have many other examples too.
So with a system like this a blogger can just do what they need to do, which is blog! Letting someone else take care of payment, processing, funding etc...It's like running your own business where you deal with one aspect of it, here the blogging aka writing, and someone else does the paperwork and arranges your itinerary.
Link to video about PPP Direct.
Link to blog post announcing the launch.
One more thing
These are the referral stats overall that I've sent to ReviewMe, I was inspired to put this up after I read Andy Beard's review, I've sent them way more clicks than they have sent me. Also only one click has converted, that may have been more bloggers than advertisers that I may have sent them. You only get paid for advertiser sign ups not blogger sign ups.
The point is, with the PPP Direct system I can keep a potential advertiser on my blog and not have them navigate somewhere else where they might end up forgetting about me or just dropping the idea all together. So I feel PPP Direct might convert more for me.
Extremely sorry for the long post, but it was needed to show what it is all about. I would very much like to know what you think?
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Excellent review! I got a PPP Direct opportunity and it was a good experience. It was a lot easier than having to battle it out in the regular opportunities area to get an opp.