6 reasons PayPerPost.com is a Bad, Bad, Bad Idea
I wrote several posts about PayPerPost.com yesterday, sending traffic to with a link, and that got me thinking about what Ted Murphy is really up to. This isn't about marketing, it's about SEO, and it's a poorly disguised attempt.
Reasons PayPerPost.com is going to fail miserably
Reason #1: The posts have requirements of only 20-50 words, which is just a sentence or two, but the post has to stay active for 30 days. That's not a paid advertisement, it's a paid link.
Reason#2: $5 a post is not real money. To make $5,000, you'd have to write and be approved for 3 posts a day for a year. The time needed alone says this is not scalable. It's low-budget link-buying pitched as advertising. Any altruistic attempts to pretend this is to help pay rent stretches credibility to the breaking point - especially when Ted is now claiming on high-traffic blogs that is helps unemployed mothers buy food!
Reason #3: Why would a company pay for an advertisement? What is the value to them? Supposedly, bloggers are already writing positive comments about the products they like. PayPerPost says they are trying to give money to bloggers that are already writing about a product. If they're already writing about a product, why would the company pay more?
The system Ted has set up, in fact, is geared towards shills who will make very little money lying about products to make a little more. Anyone with high levels of traffic who accepts this money will quickly be found out and labeled a pariah. It's destined to be a low-budget, microblogger scam.
Reason#4: The ads are the ones we hate. Dating services, debt relief, several properties for Mindcomet (including their SEO blog), and hotchicks the tshirt service. Real companies with real brands won't come near this when they realize how nasty the reaction is from the larger blogosphere.
Reason #5: Bloggers are already up in arms about it. TechCrunch and BusinessWeek have attacked it. When the July 4th holiday is over, this will get another boost. Those of use who make our living pitching viable sites and working with companies can't allow PayPerPost to be left out there without commenting. It taints all of us.
Reason #6: Ted Murphy is out in the comments of blogs trying to perform damage control. He thinks this is about any press is good press. He's going to find out that's not true in social networks.
How many fake blogs has he created?
Reasons PayPerPost.com is going to fail miserably
Reason #1: The posts have requirements of only 20-50 words, which is just a sentence or two, but the post has to stay active for 30 days. That's not a paid advertisement, it's a paid link.
Reason#2: $5 a post is not real money. To make $5,000, you'd have to write and be approved for 3 posts a day for a year. The time needed alone says this is not scalable. It's low-budget link-buying pitched as advertising. Any altruistic attempts to pretend this is to help pay rent stretches credibility to the breaking point - especially when Ted is now claiming on high-traffic blogs that is helps unemployed mothers buy food!
Reason #3: Why would a company pay for an advertisement? What is the value to them? Supposedly, bloggers are already writing positive comments about the products they like. PayPerPost says they are trying to give money to bloggers that are already writing about a product. If they're already writing about a product, why would the company pay more?
The system Ted has set up, in fact, is geared towards shills who will make very little money lying about products to make a little more. Anyone with high levels of traffic who accepts this money will quickly be found out and labeled a pariah. It's destined to be a low-budget, microblogger scam.
Reason#4: The ads are the ones we hate. Dating services, debt relief, several properties for Mindcomet (including their SEO blog), and hotchicks the tshirt service. Real companies with real brands won't come near this when they realize how nasty the reaction is from the larger blogosphere.
Reason #5: Bloggers are already up in arms about it. TechCrunch and BusinessWeek have attacked it. When the July 4th holiday is over, this will get another boost. Those of use who make our living pitching viable sites and working with companies can't allow PayPerPost to be left out there without commenting. It taints all of us.
Reason #6: Ted Murphy is out in the comments of blogs trying to perform damage control. He thinks this is about any press is good press. He's going to find out that's not true in social networks.
How many fake blogs has he created?
posted by James Durbin @ 7:28 AM PERMALINK
1 Comments:
I think you're a bit harsh. I agree that SEO is one goal, and that a part of the benefit is buying live links. And it's also about Technorati Rank.
But in our case we are thinking more about branding and getting people to try out our site, or rather a particular feature of the site that's a little buried. The nature of the feature is such that it can naturally be linked to in a neutral fashion from a post on a different subject.
We're not specifying anchor text, not requiring that the site be mentioned (nor prohibiting it), and we don't care if the site, if mentioned, is praised or trashed. We'd actually not mind if disclosure were required.
This service just gives us an advertising option beyond the incredibly lame and expensive BlogAds, without requiring us to spend inordinate amounts of time negotiating with dozens of small bloggers all over the place.
The issues we worry about are fraud and the fact that the blogger who may be posting about you may only have 5 readers per day.
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