Pay Per Post has recently clarified its TOS: Posties can no longer post back - to - back sponsored posts from any company. This means Posties blogs cannot post series of posts as follows:
PPP Sponsored - unsponsored - PayU2Blog - Bloggerwave - Blogitive - unsponsored - PPP sponsored - unsponsored - Smorty - PayU2Blog- unsponsored - PPP sponsored.
The several back-to-back sponsored posts from any company now exclude a blog from participating in PPP.
Is this really a change?
Maybe not. I interpreted the PPP’s previous TOS, and previous discussions at the forum, to prohibited back-to-back sponsored posts from any company. However, it appears some posties believed otherwise and were posting back-to-back posts quite regularly. Clarification was required and the TOS have been rewritten to make this policy absolutely unambiguous.
Better ROI for advertisers.
In my opinion, this is great for advertisers because they will probably see:
- More traffic: Your sponsored post is less likely to quickly roll off the front page of a blog that posts a flurry of posts containing inexpensive paid links. This means more blog visitors will see and read the post you pay for; if the post is well done, it means more traffic.
- More relevant audience: Generally speaking, niche bloggers are better able to retain their flavor when the proportion of paid posts is low. For example, my knitting blog cannot retain a knitting audience while carrying 50% posts on insurance, gold coins, mortgages or even slenderizing treatments and remain a knitting blog. So, advertisers who picked my blog because they wanted an audience of mostly college educated women with leisure time are more likely to get what they want if I carry relatively few ads.
- More link juice: Google and search engines are somewhat less likely to devalue the “trust” rank of a blog that shows fewer than 1 paid post out of two rather than over 75% paid posts.
In short, this will result in better returns on investment for advertisers.
Hopefully, this will also translate into better fees for the low-ad intensive blogs in PPP’s marketplace.
What about Bloggers?
Well, this will clearly cramp the style of bloggers who were running back-to-back sponsored and intended to continue. If you were planning to monetize that way, you will either need to conform to PPP’s TOS or resign from PPP. Conforming will involve either taking fewer PayU2Blog paid links or doing a additional work to crafting additional un-sponsored content to space between the PayU2Blog posts or starting a few “back-to-back sponsored posts” blogs on which to run ads from the less restrictive pay-to-post services and getting them qualified by the other services.
So, if you want to run back-to-back posts, you have some options.
For bloggers who never ran back-to-back sponsored posts, the policy clarification will have little direct impact. However, it may have an indirect impact if advertisers prefer to shop in a marketplace full of blogs containing a lower fraction of sponsored ads.
I’m guessing advertisers will prefer the low-ad blog market place. If so, we’ll advertising opportunities for a wider variety of products offered with higher fees.
