Becoming a Better Postie an Inside View of a PayPerPost Campaign
Posted in Search Marketing by jspirko on August 9th, 2007 
Recently at Franklin Spirko Media Mark Barrera and I have been working on some link building and blog marketing with our new client, Trump University. One of the things we have targeted is to improve their traffic and ranking from web surfers that want to know more about real estate training programs. To accomplish this one thing we did right away was to launch a small campaign with PayPerPost and I am going to take the time here to review 3 of the posts from the perspective of an advertiser, I will tell you the Tack Rating we gave them and why. My goal is not to praise or pick on anyone but to explain to Posties what we like to see as a client and how to improve their ratings and there by qualify for more opportunities.
I should also point out before I get into the reviews that we specified in the opportunity that we would give high tack ratings to any posties that took the extra effort to provide a second link to any of the specific course pages off the main page. This is one way an advertiser can get additional links.
- The first post is by a blog called, "Second Life Update" - which did a post titled, Learn Real Estate from Trump University. If you view that post you will see that this blogger did what I would call the minimum. There is nothing wrong with the post, the word count is good, the language is well put together and the tone is very positive. Yet when I pay for a post I expect nothing less, so that is why I call this a minimal delivery. Again nothing wrong at all but nothing that says this blogger went beyond my specified requirements. We gave this blogger 4 out of 5 Tacks for a solid delivery of what we asked for, a good score but not as high as some of the others.
- The second post is by a blog called, "The Domestic Diva" - the "Diva" did a post titled, Do the Donald. This post is what we consider a "home run" as far as being the advertiser is concerned. If you read her post you will clearly here her plucky tone with in it. She also clearly shows some extra knowledge of the subject matter, telling us she did a bit of reading on the TrumpU website and did the over all post in the same tone and method that she would do any post on her blog. She also gave us that second link down to a page off the main page with a great anchor link to it and used the info from that page to flesh out the post. We gave the Diva 5 Tacks and she really earned it.
- The third post is by a blog called, "Google and Me" - which did a post called, Donald Trump Real Estate Training. This is an example of a post that you do not want to see as an advertiser. There are two components to any good post from a service like PayPerPost. The first is link building for SEO purposes and this post delivered on that so we did not rate them to poorly. The second is the buzz and post itself and this is where this post fell apart. First the blogger did not give the extra link we requested but that is minor, even when we ask for a extra link we still give some posts with one link a 5 if the post is really good.
If you read this post you will see that the use of language is a bit spotty such as, "You will have classes" then a list of classes? I am not huge on grammar and syntax but that is pretty poor (reading the whole post will make it more clear). Also the postie states, "Maybe you can learn how to build a internet empire". Hold on there is nothing about building an Internet Empire or any online business on the TrumpU site, not to mention the whole campaign centered on real estate. We gave this Postie a 3 because they did meet the technical requirements but we will not let this blogger blog for us or our clients again. It is clear they don't take the time to know their subject and do a post with the intent to deliver exactly what was asked for much less go beyond the minimum.
So there you go three posts we received and how we rated them and more importantly why we rated them the way we did. Again this was not about picking on anyone so the fact that one was rated at only a three and I pointed out what was wrong is not personal I just hope it will help bloggers at PayPerPost do a better job and gain access to some of the better opportunities.
I would also point out that we "benched" all the posties for 60 days even the really good ones. Only because we are trying to build domain and IP diversity with the links from these posts. We are happy to have them blog again just not on the same campaign. We also "banned" the poster we rated a 3, again this is not personal but the post delivered did not accurately reflect the true nature of the page we requested a review on and as such we do not want that blogger taking future opportunities for us or our clients.
In our opinion PayPerPost is one of the most innovative services ever created, if I had any complaint it would be that I did not come up with the idea myself. We hope this blog post will help both bloggers and advertisers better understand how to get the most from PayPerPost and other blogging services. We would also love your comments on this, whether you are a blogger, an advertiser or both.
~ Jack Spirko
Technorati Tags: payperpost, paid blogging, link building, pay per post, search marketing, blogging, sponsored posting, viral marketing, blog marketing
Popularity: 23% [?]
Josef Katz said,
August 9, 2007 @ 3:45 pm
Thanks for all your help guys. We are looking forward to seeing the results of your work.
Josef
VC Dan said,
August 9, 2007 @ 4:26 pm
Great post, sharing the good and the bad.
How many posts did you sponsor? I would recommend 20+ to get enough datapoints for significant campaign analysis.
I’m also curious whether you mentioned in your opp that you would post some analysis of the posts. If not, you might want to in the future. That is a powerful way to encourage quality, while also building a feedback loop that helps everyone.
Kimber Cook said,
August 9, 2007 @ 4:29 pm
You only gave the 3rd post 3 tacks? But what about the great tag they used for the post? “Me Got paid” That’s golden!
SecondLifeUpdate said,
August 9, 2007 @ 5:34 pm
Jack, I submitted the post I did for you to digg.com. How is that for extra effort :)
Second Life Update
Lucia said,
August 9, 2007 @ 5:52 pm
Great post. I’m glad to see you used the tack system and also used benches and bans.
Joe Vaughn said,
August 10, 2007 @ 10:51 am
This is excellent feedback! If you ever need assistance with future campaigns, please reach out so I can assist! joe (at) payperpost (dot) com
Lisa said,
August 10, 2007 @ 10:54 am
Wow. That third post is terrible. Posts like that give us all a bad name. I am glad that you were able to get good posts that offset that bad one.
Cass said,
August 10, 2007 @ 11:00 am
Thank you for a great explanatory post. It’s always nice to hear from an advertiser about their likes and dislikes. I do want to point out, though, that if you have multiple clients (and it sounds like you do), the posties you benched will not be able to post about any of your clients on any of their blogs for as long as that bench is in effect.
yvette said,
August 10, 2007 @ 11:07 am
did you offer a reasonable pay? some people will only put in the effort if they care - and they only care if theyre being paid better. also the way your description is written will go over to how the posts are usually written. if its short ‘post a link. blah blah’ it will look like you dont really care and just want some link backs. if youre is descriptive and clear itll appear more like youre serious and want a post that can advertise - not simply just a link back.
Colleen said,
August 10, 2007 @ 11:07 am
The 3rd blogger obviously has no grasp of the English language. What a shame.
Marisa said,
August 10, 2007 @ 11:42 am
Thanks for the excellent feedback. You were more generous with tacks for that 3rd post than I would have been. Perhaps segmenting by geographical location will reduce the chances of getting that kind of post in the future.
jspirko said,
August 10, 2007 @ 11:45 am
Wow this got a lot of feed back, let me try to answer everyone,
First Josef, Thank you for the opportunity to work with your Company and we indeed will make the most of it for both parties.
Second VC Dan, We are going to run the campaign on and off through out the month of August. More then 20 but not to many per week. This is to create a more natural link growth. I think it is a HUGE mistake when people do like 200 posts in one week.
Kimber, Actually we ended up giving the guy TWO tacks. The more we read it the worse it looked.
SecondLifeUpdate, We really appreciate that! Unfortunately from our end the only thing we can judge is the post, its structure and things like adding Technorati Tags etc. We would not know you submitted to Digg or any other Social sites from our end. So as a Blogger if you want the best rating pay attention to things like requesting a second link, usually it only takes a few extra seconds to do and when you find the link to give you usually find more info to make a good post with too. Also I recommend every blogger do social site submissions with EVERY post paid or free does not matter. Part of why PPP rocks is you are building your blog when you do paid posts and sort of getting double results from paid posts, you get content, traffic to the post and paid all together. In many ways social site submissions are the best thing a Paid Blogger can do for themselves, so keep it up.
Lucia, we hope advertisers can learn from this as well, I will be doing a post on my company blog more for that audience soon. We have found most advertiser are NOT getting the most out of pay per post because they don’t use it strategically enough.
Joe Vaughn, thank you sir we will be in touch we have some ideas that may be very helpful and would like the opportunity to perhaps do a case study with you on this.
Lisa, it isn’t that bad, the link value is good and that poster won’t blog for this client again.
Cass, we never manage a clients business in our own account. Each has their personal account and we request access. We do this partly for why you stated and partly because many clients want consulting for a time, not forever and we don’t try to lock them in to us. Give good service and they come back for all their needs and appreciate things like making their PayPerPost or Adsense accounts portable.
Yvette, we wrote a very specific opportunity and most of the posters nailed it perfectly. As for reasonable pay, we paid what was fair for what we asked for and bloggers choose to take or not take an opportunity. One thing we do is try to make lower cost opportunites easy to do, keep the word count to like 100, give the posters ideas and make it simple to pound out a very good post in 10 minutes or less. Even at 7-10 bucks a post, 10 minutes to do the post is 40-60 dollars an hour, not bad for a blog post.
Colleen, Everyone starts somewhere, we are just not willing to pay for his on the job training. Hence the ban.
yvette said,
August 11, 2007 @ 12:20 am
ahh yes good point. but i dont think that paying for a blog post is really like hiring someone for work at an hourly rate. this is more like paying for advertisement for 30 days on a blog which is pretty different depending on the blog. but i think that because of the range of blogs that could be taking the opps - it makes it hard for the advertiser to pay a lot because you might end up getting the lower end of the deal you know?
Elizabeth said,
August 11, 2007 @ 7:24 pm
Oh and P.S. I gave the post a Bump and a Digg, too.
Domestic Diva said,
August 11, 2007 @ 11:53 pm
Ok, I am on cloud nine right now. I really appreciate you reviewing and recommending my site to others as an example. I work hard doing my payperpost opps. I do a lot of research into each “review” that I write and I am so glad that it is finally getting recognized.
Thank you so much from the bottom of my heart for giving me a 5 tack rating! I will be sending you some linky-love in return as a way to express my gratitude.
Breezie said,
August 12, 2007 @ 1:12 am
The 3rd blogger on this deal appears to have come from Thailand, you mentioned you had requested only North America, so something is wrong here.
Linky Love said,
August 13, 2007 @ 12:47 am
@jspirko
Do advertisers love that we add Technorati tags? I never did so because the PayPerPost rules are strict: no other link inside the post than the links of the advertiser.
jspirko said,
August 13, 2007 @ 10:48 am
Yvette, I agree it is not a hiring type of arrangement, however; the numbers still work out the same. In other words we would bid more for a 250 word story that required more effort by the blogger to meet all our requirements. We always bid based on the work level it should take a decent blogger to get the project done properly.
Domestic Diva, Your effort really shows in your blogging. If there were a “stable” feature where we could set up some bloggers to always see our opps or specific ops we would not only use it you would be listed in it.
Breezie, I am not sure about that I will have our contact at PPP lock into it, nothing is perfect but PPP has worked hard to make segmentation as effective as possible.
Linky Love, Yes I like Technorati tags and they do NOT violate the PPP terms of service. They go AFTER the post. Tagging represents more exposure for the advertiser so I think most would really appreciate them. It always gets my attention and higher tacks to boot.
Jack Spirko
Domestic Diva said,
August 15, 2007 @ 5:06 am
jspirko…thank you so much. That means so much!
Model Postie! | The Domestic Diva said,
August 15, 2007 @ 5:14 am
[…] “Do the Donald” had a lot of kind words to say about my post. Here is an excerpt from the article… “The second post is by a blog called, “The Domestic Diva” - the […]
Mrs. Mecomber said,
December 21, 2007 @ 2:15 pm
A great article on how the “other side” views things. It’s very important to know how the advertiser feels about the blogger’s writings. The discussion can only make things better for both parties. I’m sure after all the hits the “3-tack” blogger got from this page, he’s all the wiser!
I love how you describe the Domestic Diva: plucky. There are a lot of plucky writers out there! I’m plucky! Check my blog out sometime! ;)
Thanks so much for the insight. It is a great benefit.