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9 users responded to this post

Ted Murphy (1 comments.) said in May 30th, 2007 at 4:16 pm    

Excellent review Trish! Very thorough.

Jarrod (SponsoredReviews) (4 comments.) said in May 31st, 2007 at 3:16 pm    

Hi Trish,

I honestly have mixed feelings about your $20 PayPerPost Direct offering.

I agree that it is great for the blogger and advertiser, but then I look at your account in our system and see the huge amount of money you are making through us.

I then ask myself is it fair to us to list you in our directory, send you tons of advertisers, only to have them come to your site and see that they can purchase a review for $20.

At $20 a pop you would have to do a ton of reviews to make the same money you have made with SR.

I’m honestly at a loss at what to do here. We spend a lot of money promoting the blogs in our system and sending you guys work.

Any suggestions? am I crazy to think that we should not continue sending you advertisers?

I have no problem with PayPerPost direct. If you guys can create your own advertisers, then you should make a larger portion of the pie, but biting the hand the feeds you isn’t exactly kosher either.

-Jarrod

Jarrod (SponsoredReviews) (4 comments.) said in May 31st, 2007 at 3:34 pm    

To clarify your question about whether SponsoredReviews charges anything additional to the advertiser, we do not. Our fee is a flat 35% with no additional charges to the advertiser.

VC Dan (1 comments.) said in May 31st, 2007 at 11:37 pm    

Jarrod and I had this apples-to-apples fee/markup discussion on another blog.

SR’s 53% ($28/$52) “markup” equates to a 35% ($28/$80) “cut”.
PPP’s Marketplace 35% markup equates to only a 26% cut.
PPP Direct is even lower, with a 10% markup equating to only a 9% cut.

Andy Beard’s latest review of PPP Direct provides even further detail on what bloggers make and advertisers pay with various systems, including SR. You can see for yourself who puts the most in blogger pockets while charging advertisers the least:
http://andybeard.eu/2007/05/payperpost-direct-review.html

As for Jarrod’s other comment above, I’ll bite my lip for now, but I think all the marketplaces need to remember that advertisers, bloggers and audiences are the hands that feed — providing value to them is the core to building this industry.

Tricia (415 comments.) said in June 1st, 2007 at 5:27 am    

Jarrod

I can understand that you have some concern over my offering PPP Direct reviews for $20, but I did try to make it clear - directly under the badge - that I was offering reviews at this price for a limited time only.

You’re right. I have made quite a bit of money through Sponsored Reviews and I’m very pleased that I’ve done well with your company. I would very much like to continue working with SR.

I hope you understand that PPP Direct is only a week old, and I, like many other bloggers who work with Payperpost, was eager to try out this new system.

My price was set much lower for PPP Direct than I list on SR or any other site that allows me to list my desired price per review simply because I wanted to test the system and get an offer or two. By no means was I attempting to game the system and lure advertisers from your site. I hope that you don’t think that.

I have absolutely no intention of keeping my price at $20 for much longer. In fact, I might change my price later today.

Each week that goes by I get more and more private offers to write reviews on my sites. It’s for that very reason that I embraced the idea of PPP direct.

I like the idea of a middleman. It’s good for bloggers and advertisers in that there’s a system in place to ensure that both parties are happy and that the blogger does in fact get paid when the review is accepted.

When you do private deals there’s no guarantee that a blogger will be paid unless they demand payment in advance, and if they do, will the advertiser be happy with the final product? Who knows. At least with PPP direct you can negotiate back and forth with PPP as a mediator if necessary.

I’ve been getting private offers for longer than Sponsored Reviews has been around. In fact I’ve been getting private offers for well over a year. I get them for my websites too.

Where these advertisers come from I don’t know. In most cases I’ve never seen any of them advertise on any of the paid blogging sites that I work with, so by allowing them to deal with me through PPP direct I don’t believe that I’m taking away potential business from a paid blogging company, I’m just giving them a way of offering me work in a way that I feel comfortable doing business.

You said: “At $20 a pop you would have to do a ton of reviews to make the same money you have made with SR.”

Actually, while I have a decent list price on SR of $80 I don’t actually get accepted at, or even bid my full price all that often.

I just spent some time adding up the price I was paid for all the reviews that I’ve completed so far and divided them by the number of reviews and my average payout per review is $30.87 if I did my math correctly. I think that means my average bid is about $45.

I don’t really expect that I’ll ever get as much work through PPP Direct as I do through SR, regular PPP or any of the other paid blogging companies where I’ve registered my sites. However, just like many other bloggers who earn money through blogging I don’t like to keep all my eggs in one basket, so I felt compelled to try out the PPP direct system.

You said: “Any suggestions? am I crazy to think that we should not continue sending you advertisers?”

Well, I’ve already told you that I will be raising my price on PPP Direct. I don’t know what I’ll set my price at yet.

I do not think it would be very fair of SR to single me out and penalize me for using PPP Direct. You’ve voiced your concerns and I do understand your point of view. I do hope that you now understand why I set my price at $20 to begin with, and how I hope to use PPP Direct.

I don’t believe your problem is really with me, but PPP Direct and how not just I, but other bloggers as well, are promoting direct reviews?

You said: “I have no problem with PayPerPost direct. If you guys can create your own advertisers, then you should make a larger portion of the pie, but biting the hand the feeds you isn’t exactly kosher either.”

It was never my intention to “bite the hand that feeds me”.

The post you have commented on was actually a PPP direct review from PPP itself. They took advantage of their own system and used their bloggers to advertise their new feature. As Lucia said in her own post about this issue PPP is pretty good at self advertising.

The review request asked that we compare the new PPP Direct with other paid blogging companies. I’m sorry if anything that I said in my review bothered you. I was trying to state the facts as I know them and not trying to be critical at all.

As I said earlier I get private review requests ALL the time. Some are for pay, others send me products and samples to review - regardless of how they come about I’ve never seen any of these companies or individuals advertising on SR, ReviewMe, PPP or any of the other companies so yes, I have been able to create my own advertisers and it is my hope that they will use the PPP direct system.

Am I wrong in thinking that you were prompted to leave this comment mainly because of the price I set for my PPP Direct reviews?

If that is the case, have I reassured you that my price will be going up?

I plan on changing the price to an as yet undetermined amount later today. Right now it’s 5:20 a.m. and after being upset by this comment all day I don’t plan on doing any more today - I’m going to bed and I’ll be changing my price when it comes to me sometime later on today.

I must say that I do feel singled out. There are many other bloggers using the PPP Direct system and Sponsored Reviews as well. I’m sure others set their PPP Direct prices a little on the low side for their blogs in order to try the system out as well.

I would very much like to continue working with you and your company Sponsored Reviews. I will not stoop down to begging though. :)

You now know my side of the story, and I hope you know I didn’t mean to cause any ill will between Sponsored Reviews or any other companies that I do work for by setting my price at $20. Perhaps instead of being upset I should be flattered that you think a review on my site should be worth more? :)

I hope that whatever decision you come to is based more on how your company should respond to PPP Direct as a whole, rather than to this single instance of blogger versus Sponsored Reviews.

Do you have any comments or suggestions?

Would it be your preference that bloggers who use both Sponsored Reviews and PPP Direct do not use the PPP Direct badge that lists their price? (there is another badge that doesn’t show a price). Perhaps that would level the playing field a bit?

Tricia

Jarrod (SponsoredReviews) (4 comments.) said in June 1st, 2007 at 1:51 pm    

Hi Tricia,

Great response.

Yes, the biggest problem we have is with the $20 amount of the badge. It looks bad when your price listed in our system is 4 times the amount of the price showing on your site.

Are we going to do something about bloggers who show a lower price on their site from what they have listed in our system…. I honestly do not know. It hasn’t been a problem. Most bloggers I’ve seen so far are listing their PPP direct price the same or higher then their SR price.

You ask why I singled you out. That’s not the intention, You just happen to be very active in our system plus you are very vocal about paid review companies, and you were one of the first sites I noticed that was listing such a low price compared to the price in our system.

Keep up the good work.

Jarrod (SponsoredReviews) (4 comments.) said in June 1st, 2007 at 3:09 pm    

Hi Dan,

I’m honestly suprized every time I see you responding on a blog. Don’t you have companies to fund or something :)

Your numbers do look compelling, and yes SR is a smaller company without millions of dollars in our war chest. Slightly Higher transaction fees are needed to fund our marketing and staffing requirements.

With that being said we are paying out thousands of dollars each day to bloggers just like Tricia who I assume appreciate any work they can get.

Will SponsoredReviews ever be the size of PayPerPost? Probably not anytime soon. But will we continue to convert advertisers into paying jobs for bloggers, absolutely.

andy (2 comments.) said in June 3rd, 2007 at 4:01 pm    

Thanks for the great review. I have been a ppp member for a while but i haven’t used ppp direct yet. I always wondered how much they charged and now I know. I guess I will try it soon.

Noni (1 comments.) said in June 4th, 2007 at 6:17 am    

Looks neat, maybe I’ll give it a try and have you review one of my sites :)

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