What kind of results did you have when you tried this out? I recently bought 3 posts just to see what kind of small bits of traffic I could summon up so I could guesstimate for larger purchases. I have yet to receive a single hit from the websites that posted about my site. According to the PayPerPost stats, there has been 166 views as of right now, but I show no clickthroughs on my stats program. I purchased these about a week ago. Also, the quality of the writing was VERY VERY poor. One of them was decent, but the other two were pure crap with misspellings out the ying yang, and horrid grammar added on top of that. What was your experience?
You have to offer a decent pay-out and then make sure you raise the expectation of the quality in the opp description. I have had very good posts (also a few crap ones though) but rather than for traffic, I've done it for SEO and that has worked very well indeed.
Allright, so I guess stating that you want correct spelling and good grammar is a must? I would think that it was pretty much a given, but ok. What is a good price per post? $10-$20?
Anything from $6 (to them) and upwards combined with a description clearly stating the must and mustn't do's has given me satisfactory results. A lot of them seem to be of the below-average IQ and/or sharpness so you have to spell out to them what to do. I write things like "look here and here for inspiration, phrases you can build your post around include 'this xyz service is great because...' our customers have found benefit A and B the most rewarding" etc. You have to put in their minds what you want them to write about, plant the seeds for them assuming they won't be able to figure it out themselves. Having said that, I've seen some quality posts as well where the passion for the subject clearly showed.
Mindful that some of the blogs registered with PayPerPost are not in good traffic condition. Some of them are MFPPP (made for payperpost). It is good to calculate the CPC of the traffic from PPP.
How hard of a time will Google have identifying PPP as a link scam? They even mention link popularity and ranking well in the search engines right on the same page. PLUS, they only guarantee the link stays up for 30 days.
I think they're great for SEO purposes. I haven't tested them for any other purpose though. Great way to get your site indexed/cached with the search engines, while getting a good anchor text link. I'd be curious to see some launch a product through their network and see if they can create enough buzz to generate a profit...
Paying for blog posts should be mainly for SEO reason IMHO. Unless the blog has serious traffic and features your links right, traffic will be minimal at best. As to writing quality, you can't expect too much from bloggers in general.
Well, I went ahead an purchased 10 articles. Only 3 have been written thus far... But since I specified correct spelling and grammar, the posts did improve greatly.
Speaking from a blogger's perspective, I don't even look at opportunities less than $6. (unless they're low word count) Also, there are too many advertisers requesting 200+ words for little money, it's absolutely ridiculous. Advertisers need to be realistic
There's bound to be an unstable period when a new marketplace such as paid posting appears. Advertisers are trying to get a good value deal, and bloggers are trying to make a quick buck. Pricing and quality will balance out soon enough, as the sploggy blogs get weeded out and the advertisers come to realise what a decent post is worth. I'd really like to see the price of the post vary depending on the quality of the blog - someone like ProBlogger should obviously be paid more because the ad is exposed to more eyes. This raises is question, should you be paid based on how much traffic you can drive?
I used the service in the past, and was pretty happy with the results, but they seem to have hit the self destruct button now... Got an email from them the other day saying that they are now not allowing people to state that they don't want a disclaimer added to each post. So now all posts stand to have a big qualifier to the effect of 'This post was sponsored by YourCompany.com' added to them. This has totally messed up the whole idea of the service now as far as I'm concerned. I'm not interested in an advert on someone's blog, I want a post that is indistinguishable from a 'natural' post by both visitors & search engines! I very much doubt that I'll be using them again now!
i think it's only a small portion of the posties that inform readers on each paid post... the majority just write as if it's an ordinary post
Is this part of the disclosure policy? I have the disclosure tag on my SEO blog and it seems to be just fine.