Wednesday, December 20, 2006

Pay per post is a no go

My friend Farhan forwarded me a link to Rockstartup (web 2.0. reality TV…). They are following up “the Internet's next monster company” payperpost.com “from its initial concept to international fame.”

I do not like the concept of pay-per-post at all.

If you are a business, you cannot win. A blogger can trash your product and get paid for it. A blogger can rave about your product but who will believe what he/she says? They are being paid after all. There is an irreconcilable conflict between providing independent opinions about a product and being paid to talk about a product. You just cannot be independent if you are paid by the company those products you are reviewing. As a customer, who are you going to trust? If there is no trust, what is the point to get bloggers talking about your product? The whole think sounds desperate. Are your products so bad or insignificant that you need to pay people to talk about them? If you want to be seen on blogs, join a blog advertising network or Adsense.

The only upside is that you get nice text links in context to your site, thus boost your search engines ranking. Other than that: avoid.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I would have to say I disagree with your assumption. All advertising is paid for, and on the whole--World Citizens are aware of it. Just because Nike advertises that Air Jordan's will make you fly like Michael Jordan--who in their right minds thinks that. Just because a Blogster mentions how great a new site for printer ink is--we know what ads are--we are used to what ads mean. It's still hit or miss until the individual finds what they like for themselves. My kids pesonally wear Converse!!

Joël Céré said...

I see your point. Here is mine: Blogs are popular because they are independent. Bloggers are free from editorial or commercial pressure. That’s why people like to read them and often trust bloggers more than mainstream media (and of course more than advertising). Imagine that you are reading the motoring section of your favourite newspaper. There are ads and you take them as ads. They are here to sell and it is fair game. There are articles written by journalists who are either factual or opinion pieces. You expect these to be independent. One article, written by a journalist you like and trust talks about how much he likes the latest Toyota. But you know he is being paid by Toyota. You will obviously take whatever he says with a pinch of salt. So as you won’t believe everything an ad in a newspaper says, you won’t believe a guy paid to talk about a product either. What is the point of pay-per-post? This could undermine the credibility of bloggers as you will always have the suspicion that they are being paid to say whatever they say. This removes the very reason why blogs are popular at the first place. If they are as independent and impartial as any piece of advertising, why read them?

Pascal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Pascal said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Pascal said...

I do agree with you Joël. Indeed, payperpost.com is a quite a clumsy attempt to monetize what cannot be. A fully flawed and very speculative business model(are we back in 1999 here guys????) since it seeks to harness the very reason for which we are blogging.
Some more opinions (in French) on this topic on http://businessdevil.over-blog.net

Joël Céré said...

Pascal, I tried to look at your blog at the URL you posted but it says that "Le blog "businessdevil.over-blog.net" n'existe pas". Do you want to repost the URL?