Have you ever thought about what you would want if you were buying a paid review through a service like the Pay Per Post marketplace? It’s worth thinking about if you ever considered paying to advertise your blog.
In the PPP marketplace an advertiser does not hand select from the 70,000 available blogs. This saves time and cost. But if an advertiser doesn’t hand select blogs, can they come up with effective ways to filter out blogs that provide a poor ROI?
I don’t know. But, I’ve been thinking about what I consider to be “best practices”, which I group by function:
Rules about posting frequency
- At least 2 posts in the seven days prior to my paid review.
- No more than 3 posts on the day my review runs.
- No more than 14 posts in the seven days before my review.
Why? I want some minimum posting frequency to ensure that the blog is active; at least 2 posts the previous week should do this. I also want to ensure my post remains visible for a reasonable period of time; fewer than 3 posts they day my post runs will generally ensure this.
But why no more than 14 posts in the week before my article runs? The PPP marketplace is restricted to single author blogs; many of high quality. It also contains quite a number bloggers who also blog for PayU2Blog, V7N, Smorty, and a large variety of different services.
I may be mistaken, but I believe some of these sneak back-to-back paid posts run past the PPP reviewers; one of the hall-marks of those running back-to-back-to-back paid posts is a very high posting frequency. I also believe these blogs will give poor ROI. I think restricting an OPP to blogs with fewer than 14 posts/week will eliminate most of these blogs.
External Rank Guidelines
- Alexa rank below 500,000.
- If blog existed at the time of the last Google Toolbar rerank, PR 2 or greater.
Why? Well, let’s face facts. Any blogger who is monetizing is trying to apply SEO practices at least a little. PPP already requires blogs to be at least 3 months old. Posties know other posties, and all install Alexa toolbars. If a blog in in the PPP system and has an Alexa above 500,000, there is a serious risk it has no traffic at all (or it’s a very inexperienced blogger.)
If their PR is less than 2 after a Google Toolbar rerank, there is a serious likelyhood the have no quality back links and very, very few people value that blog.
Rules related to links
- No sitewide ‘Postie Roll’ link.
- No sidebar or footer links to “PayU2Blog”.
- No more than 2 links to gambling, mortgage, loans, credit cards or insurance sites on any pages displaying my post.
- Post before and after mine may not link exactly one external domain.
Why? I would want to create rules about links that either a) minimize the number of bloggers who have achieved their PR almost exclusively by gaming the system or b) riddle their blogs with paid links.
The “Postie Roll” is described at the PPP boards, and is simply an agreed on link exchange with a large number of other posties. It’s appearance on a sidebar may suggest that blog’s Google PR is gamed to higher than truly deserved.
The other three rules pertain to a blogger running constant paid links.
PayU2Blog is a service that emails bloggers a list of links to include in blogs. The posts need not be relevant, there is no requirement to space out posts. The result is loads and load of paid links which devalues the values of any individual link.
Likewise, ads for mortgages, loans, credit, casinos, poker or anything associated with those industries are the hallmark of heavily monetized blogs.
And why the curious requirement that the post before and after mine not contain links to exactly one external domain? When advertisers do pay for a link, they generally insist on specific links pointing only to their domain. Zero external links, quite obviously, is not a paid post. But, strangely enough, two or more external links is almost never a paid post.
Rule about categories
- Post must be placed in at least one ‘non-sponsored’ category that maintains a “followed” archive.
Why? Heck, I want to be maximize the likelyhood that my post remains visible on the web and ends up in an archive with other decent posts. So, I insist it goes in a category that, hopefully, contains some unsponsored posts!
What would you ask for?
Well, it’s Sunday. So, with some luck, readers have a bit of time to tell me what criteria they might insist on in a PPP post. Or, maybe debate whether or not these criteria are either over-restrictive or under-restrictive.
Then, if I figure out the best set of criteria, I may someday actually buy some reviews through PPP. 