Payperpost, Blogsvertiser, ReviewMe, Creamaid... all a waste of time/money?

Don't get me wrong, from a marketer's I think the concept is great: Pay money, get links. But why does it not work?

Take creamaid, for example. They've had 22 "conversations" since August. That's less than one advertiser a week! That's not a lot of action by any measurement. At that rate they may not even make enough to cover their server costs! Why aren't all you advertisers flocking to it? I call the phone number and the guy who picks up sounds confused. CreamAid? Er, what number?...... Hold on. Er........... Who do you want? .............What aid, again? OK, .............CreamAid? How can I help you?

OK, Creamaid isn't the big one, it's payperpost. But that's still in beta, can't take money on creditcards (from most people), has numerous bugs etc. That would all be worthwhile if it was active. At present there are 71 "opportunities". But, if you look more closely, if your blog is in Health, Society/Culture or Sports there are only about 1-2 opportunities for all of this month and the next... and at a measly $5 a shot.

Reviewme has high costs - minimum that you're charged is, I think, $40 per link so it's understandable they don't get as many ads as, say, payperpost. (BTW, notice how they don't have a phone number on their site? It's 'cause they don't want to talk to you. They don't reply to emails properly either. And that's emails from someone who wants to spend money. Same story with blogsvertise, they have a phone number but never answer ANY of the extensions - I've tried them all at different times of the day)

Blogitive "appreciate my interest in their services" and wanted my phone number to speak with me which I provided 10 days ago. They are yet to call.

Blogsvertise take money up front on the assumption that all your chosen bloggers will take up your offer. Many don't. So all that money that's sitting with them (hundreds of dollars) is not refunded as standard, can't be refunded on request, and you have to speak with a supervisor if you have the nerve to ask for a refund on the money that hasn't been used. But the service is dead. Sort of. I listed a solid, good webmaster related opportunity and in a whole week only 7 bloggers took up the offer.

Only 7! I thought I'd have 700! Where have they all gone? Or are bloggers giving up on these services?

My questions to you guys who've used any of these services: Do you think that there is any future for this model? And whom do you think is best placed to jump into the arena and do a proper job?

 

Reviewme is the best. PPP is full of people willing to write blog post for $10. needless to say the links are almost worthless.

With reviewme you can get on some very good blogs, as long as you have the budget.

There are still very few advertisers, most have not caught on to the reasons why you should be doing this.

There is a newcomer called http://www.sponsoredreviews.com/ from textlinkbrokers.com

 

Isn't payperpost from textlinkbrokers?

Anyway, how busy is sponsoredreviews at present?

There seems to be a fair amount of time cost involved just to get familiar with how each service operates. That on its own may dissuade advertisers. Even after investing that time I'm considering giving up as using these services seems to be almost as time intensive as doing individual deals here in DP as I've been doing in the past.

 

I would suggest blogvertise -- the best and easy to deal with.
Rest payperpost, review me sucks.

 

Some good point foggy. I personally dont like this kind of advertising. For me there is some better ways at cheaper prices...

 

I just found the key to make PPP many times more valuable, for the same price. With it I just pumped myself to #2 again in 48 hours, from lower on the first page.

Not going to share the secret yet until I have enough stats to back up my claim but you have to look at the bigger picture. Can you really expect that $5 link from a blogspot blog to be worth much? No! But can *you* MAKE it worth more? Yes! You can! Easily!

 

Will be interested to hear that. My tactic is to say no blogspot blogs.

 

Not a "waste" of time and money, but in my experience, time and money can be better spent.

 

I havent tried it yet. But judging what I get from my own forum posts, Im not to optimistic. I am curious as to what TOPS30 has to say though...

?

 

Hello, I work in the Customer Service department of Blogsvertise and I often stop by the forums here to see if anyone has any questions about our service. I wanted to let you know some information that might help you have a better experience with Blogsvertise if you decide to use us again in the future. I am not sure which Order you are talking about just from the information here on the forum, but we do not send the orders out to every blogger so that is why '700' did not take up your offer. We like to manually choose high quality blogs for our advertisers so we look for bloggers with high PR or that are really relevant to your website. We give the bloggers 5 days to respond and complete the task so that is why it may have seemed like your order was just sitting there for days.

Also, advertisers can manually choose the bloggers they wish to write the blog entries. We have also unveiled a new system where advertisers who have chosen their own bloggers receive a credit for any unfulfilled offers after 5 days, and you can use this credit to choose substitute bloggers for your current campaigns or use the credit for a new order, say on another one of your sites or with different keywords. This should help you with your complaint about not receiving any follow-up on existing orders.

If you have any other questions, please feel free to post them here or email me privately at .

 

I've been with Blogsvertise as a blogger for several months now and they've always been okay with me. I don't get that many offers but, on the whole, those I do get are related to the advertiser in question. Do take Cheryl up on her offer if you have any issues or questions you want to raise - she's very helpful.

 

I'm a partner in v7n Contextual which offers a similar service. You can find out more about it here:
http://www.avivadirectory.com/downloadblog/?p=240

Although new, we have a large selection of webmaster related blogs and we are continually adding more. Depending on your precise topic, we could probably handle 50 to 100 blog links.

Also, we put customer service as our number one priority. You can simply PM me and I'll get back to you quickly.

 

Why wasn't that built-in from the start? But, well done. Subsequent to my starting this thread and harassing you by email you have indeed made this sensible change. And advertisers can actually re-use funds that are remaining in their account. I will also accept that Cheryl does indeed reply to emails.

I know I can pick bloggers but if you take out the PR0 blogs, the ones with no posts since Christ was in high school, the blogspot ones (many are low quality so it's easier to avoid the lot of them) etc., then that leaves hardly any blogs at all. In "Careers & Occupations" for example you have 40 blogs at present, only 5 of which have PR. Seriously, just 5! If I remove the blogspot ones I'm left with just TWO! Let's try the "Sports" category. Again, just two. Real Estate = 2. Crafts =2.

So, where are the bloggers? Why aren't they signing up for Blogsvertise and other services? Why don't they want the money?

(I paid you $500 around the time I started this thread, onlinedude, but I don't have any comments yet on your service so that's why I haven't mentioned you. )

 

I've been writing posts for PPP and for some of the others. There are a number of problems with the service in my opinion, but what there is could be a gold mine for the people who know how to use PPP well.

There are some terrible bloggers who just whack out a few words on each post, and between posts to bump up or fill the posts. I won't claim that they are on blogspot or not, some of them are not. But they are easy to spot...

By screening for them in your selection process, you can certainly lessen the 'wasted' resources, by choosing higher PR/Alexa/Technorati ratings.

Other bloggers will whack out quite a decent post for you, if you provide enough space and information for them to deal with your advertisement.

As a blogger, I do try to provide value for money on these postings that I choose for my blog, BUT I don't really do posts for less than $10. I think many of the other bloggers are slowly coming around to this kind of number, too, as a kind of minimum.

It's not that they are greedy, it's just that for many people $5 posts aren't that worth it. Dunno. I guess it's subconscious.

Also, I do tend to think that the whole blogging for $ is based on some false assumptions about why people blog. Most people started blogging for free because it's something that they were interested in doing, some of whom have been very successful either paid or in some other way of remuneration. But the remuneration came because of the passion.

But when advertisers offer money for blog postings, what was done for free and enthusiastically may become more difficult for many bloggers: more rules, more expectations, more trouble, more time...! It's difficult for advertisers to 'require' anything from bloggers because of the lack of binding contracts, employee relations, or even face2face pressure. The tools for requiring certain standards are in fact quite blunt. It's quite likely that some of the 'advertisers' would like to have more compunction behind the offers (as payu2blog tries) in quality, quantity and topic, but ...

As it is, some of the new rules of PPP have in fact driven away quite a few bloggers, including regulars and newcomers. Many others are posting less frequently for a variety of reasons (though their blogs are still updated regularly). Still others are finding that the higher standards PPP are requiring now benefit their blog tremendously and that money comes from many sources, not just PPP.

The advertisers may come to companies like PPP and find that there are lots of bloggers who potentially would love to blog about their products, but because they don't have adequate ways to judge bloggers' skills, may find that they either get lots of crap posts or they don't get enough offers.

So the success of a project like PPP rests solely on getting the balance right between bloggers and advertisers. Fall to far to one side, and the other group will begin to distance itself. On the other hand, if PPP tries to bind its bloggers more tightly (by rewarding them better) perhaps they will be more successful in the short term by becoming 'sticky'. If they fail to become sticky by driving too many wedges between the bloggers and the service, bloggers will find other ways to cut out the middleman (for those 'in the know') or find other sources of income.

So it's important for PPP to get the right balance between itself, its bloggers and its advertisers. PPP is no Ebay, and could be gone in an internet minute.

A good example is my own blog: I've now sought out several other income sources, while none of them is quite as consistent as PPP in the short term. With time, some of the revenue sources could be even more stable than PPP, without any of the extra effort that PPP requires.

Kenneth

 

Speaking from my own personal opinion on the situation, as a blogger myself, I have been hesitant to sign-up for such services as I am not sure how I feel about being paid to write a review.

I know it makes sense that my time should be worth something, but I'm just not sure how my readers would feel if/when they know that I'm being paid by the company to review the company/product.

Even with the "unbias no positive review guarantee" clause like ReviewMe has, it still seems taboo in the blogosphere to be a paid lacky for some company.