PayPerPost

[drmomentum[$]]

A friend of mine recently started doing this PayPerPost.com thing. I guess it's a site that helps hook up products with reviewers. Like Epinions, except that you get paid by the company that makes the product.

It doesn't really strike me as being up my alley at this point in time, but I got curious about it since a friend has signed up. Anyone here have any interaction with PayPerPost, or know anything about it?

-JP

[emeleel]

I see a lot of PPP posts in blogs, and I think they're fine, the ones I've seen. But apparently it's quite controversial in "serious blogger" circles, and lots of people look down on it. But it seems to be pretty popular in mid-level, everyman type blogs.

[pippadaisy[$]]

I find PayPerPost to be a blight upon the blogging community.

[drmomentum[$]]

Spill, pippa!

I admit, I'm not too comfy with the idea behind it. And, while I haven't come to a firm conclusion, I have the vague feeling that it would hurt my blog to have sponsorship disclosures and specifically sponsored contend. I like my semi-random targeted Google ads, and they don't seem to bother my regular readers.

I dunno. I guess it's just not my thing.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

I think it's cheesy. I guess if you were to specifically disclose when you were being paid to post it might not be so bad, but as far as I know, most people don't. So it undermines the sense of trust being reader and blogger, the belief that bloggers are just individuals giving their honest opinion about stuff in their lives.

I've also seen it done VERY awkwardly, where someone, totally out of the blue, will start praising the wonders of resort timeshare condominums, or something like that, that they would never use themselves in a million years.

Google ads are fine with me because it is obvious that they are ads. What the companies that pay for the blog-per-posts are hoping is that your paid for posts DON'T appear to be ads -- that they would appear to be just another post, one person just happening to mention to another how much they enjoy using the products of company X. As far as I know, the companies don't prohibit you from disclosing that you are being paid for your posts, but I think they know that most people won't disclose, and that's what they are counting on.

[drmomentum[$]]

PPP has a disclosure badge, and they say disclosure is required.

PayPerPost.com :: Ethics, Ethical Blogging, Word of Mouth Ethics

[AuntieEmma[$]]

Though that's not how it seems to work in the real world.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

For some scathing comments, see this (scroll down past the discussion of "Paid Posting Tools," which is actually something else):

Making Light: I am not content; I am a human being

.... There are three problems with this. First, affiliated bloggers aren’t required to disclose their relationship with PPP and its advertisers, and they’re silently paid off via PayPal. Ted Murphy, creator of PPP, has not come up with a new idea. This is plain old-fashioned Payola: a corrupt, dishonest practice and a violation of the reader’s trust.

Following a slew of online denunciations, PayPerPost came up with a breathtakingly cynical response: DisclosurePolicy.org, which automates the process of generating a disclosure policy for your weblog, which you then register with them. However, the degree of disclosure is left entirely up to the weblogger—which means it changes exactly nothing. ...

[phoenixx]

I have been experimenting with PPP on AppleGirl and SmokeRings to give it an Eps review (or rather, add it to my growing list of Eps reviews waiting to happen).

I am not pleased. I will come back and elaborate later, once I handle some deadline stuff.

[drmomentum[$]]

Looking forward to it.

[hadassahchana[$]]

If the companies pay for the reviews, then how is that going to mkae them fair and unbiased? On EPs, if someone reviews a book by a friend or family member or agrees to give positive reviews in exchange for loot or money from the publisher, that review is automatically NH'd by most raters.

[phoenixx]

So, PPP sounded good in theory: an extra few dollars for product reviews, which they promise you will get opportunities for based on your web content.

In fact, PPP is only good if your blog is spam or highly ranked (page rank 6 or better) - if your blog is normal you are only offered the chance to write about things no one cares about, or that don't fit your blog.

They also say they encourage unbiased reviews - you are supposed to get the money whether or not you like the product, service, show, etc. That isn't in fact the case - if you give a negative review, you do get the money, but your ranking in PPP system drops, meaning you get even less opportunities to paid posts than before.

In addition to all of that, their interface and customer service leaves a lot to be desired, and if you have more than blog, it is very difficult to get them both listed.

I just didn't like it overall, though I think it COULD be good if they worked out the spam tendencies and the ranking kinks and opened up more of the better topics to more people, instead of just to the people willing to splog their blog.

I haven't had time to take the PPP thingies off my blogs yet, but I will be this week sometime.

[AuntieEmma[$]]

hadassahchana said

If the companies pay for the reviews, then how is that going to mkae them fair and unbiased? On EPs, if someone reviews a book by a friend or family member or agrees to give positive reviews in exchange for loot or money from the publisher, that review is automatically NH'd by most raters.

I agree. The whole basis for Epinions, the thing that makes it work, is that reviewers are not paid by the companies that make the products they are reviewing, and that there is a way to enforce that through the web-of-trust and rating systems.

The pay per post advertisers are not looking for fair and unbaised coverage. They want plugs. It's similar to the way that liquor companies pay attractive, trendy-looking people to go to bars and chat about how they love that company's new beer. Viral marketing -- word of mouth -- is very powerful, and companies are eager to try to exploit it.

[drmomentum[$]]

Thanks, Leslie, for those details!