Analysis on PayPerPost

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When I read about PayPerPost, it appeared to me to be a good idea simply because it gave me one approach to earn money (yes guys I dint start blogging for the sheer fun or anything like that). One of the blogs that I visit regularly is John Chow Dot Com and I saw that he had gotten active about PayPerPost and had even requested for a review of his site there. As is usually the case with me I started analyzing a little more about the concept of PayPerPost.

I think that PayPerPost has done a great job to identify a new 'breed' of advertisers - the bloggers. Every product in the market is trying to advertise to the visitors to a blog, but PayPerPost is trying to address the bloggers itself. Don't have any data but I think the blogging community is a reasonably closed community (more on this thought sometime later) - If you simply analyze a set of visitors to a blog the chance that the visitor is a blogger himself is very high.

So what does PayPerPost offer - If you look at a blogger who has his site running he is definitely looking at options of monetizing his blog by carrying advertisements of others. But the important observation which I think might have led to the PayPerPost business model is the discovery of the need / opportunity of bloggers using each other's blogs to drive up traffic for their co-bloggers.

But I think that there are some possible problems in the business model of PayPerPost which I highlight below. Feel free to contradict !

Top 5 problems that I see are,

1. Risk of having your blog become a parasite - After the initial hype bloggers will not use this simply because it might be easier to just get linked on high traffic site rather than write stuff about other blogs in the blogosphere - At least I might not want to simply write about other blogs on my blog !
   
2. To trust or not ? - There would always be a shadow of doubt in the mind of the reader of a PayPerPost posting. Surely the fact that the posting has been written for a fee will weigh on the mind, irrespective of the writer saying that it is his/her real view
3. More Traffic means more revenue ? - To the best of my knowledge there have been many items that I have read about the fact that traffic to a site from some sources do not translate into revenue for the Blog owner. For example I remember reading about how Digg traffic was not very useful for John (read the post here) - I also read a few comments on some blogs about the same being true for traffic from PayPerPost postings
4. Polarize the haves and have-not's further in the blog world - If you have a casual look at the criteria that people are setting in the opportunities that are being posted on PayPerPost its clear that it will be a good option only for blogs which have 'some' stature. I am at a loss to think such blogs might carry posts on other blogs - firmly believe that every blog has an identity and simply writing about other blogs clearly demeans that !
5. Fill the blog's with a lot of junk - If this model takes off and people start writing about each other I am terrified at the amount of junk that will fill the blogosphere. Already I feel getting at anything useful on Digg or any of the other page ranking systems is a little difficult and with the addition of a new type of useless content it will become tougher !
   

Top 3 changes which I think will work towards making PayPerPost a useful thing to have

1. Paid Comments - Have some control on what type of opportunities are posted - I would rather see people asking for reviews of specific posts rather than blogs in general. More on the lines of 'paid comments' for example might be useful
2. Targeted Opportunities - Post opportunities for specific 'blogs' - for example a opportunity for a set of 10 blogs to carry a PayPerPost posting
3. Innovative Pricing Schemes - Usually the first few PayPerPost postings on my opportunity are the most relevant. I feel the next ones will simply rehash the content in the first few and post it. Some options to avoid this - possibly a stepped posting fee model ?. I am sure one can think of many more ones like this

Tags: payperpost