Just after I write my opinion on paid reviews I read that Sponsored Reviews (a new blog paid review company) just opened their doors to the public. Right after I registered my account and setup my blog I saw that I had a review request from who else but Sponsored Reviews themselves!

Sponsored Reviews is a new paid review company that draws on elements from both PayPerPost and ReviewMe. It allows bloggers to register their blogs and either apply for review opportunities or let advertisers come to them (borrowing a little from PPP and RM). What I immediately liked about Sponsored Reviews was there was no arbitrary PR or age requirement which has been what has kept me out of PP and RM so far. Their requirements are more content-oriented:

• Your blog must contain at least 10 posts with 200 words of unique content each.
• Your blog must not be completely automated or appear to be created solely for search engine traffic.
• Your blog must have at least a 3:1 ratio of non-paid to paid content.
• You must complete all accepted reviews within 7 days, or your account will be suspended.
• Foreign Language blogs (non-english) must clearly state in the title which language the blog is written in. i.e. “Jose’s Blog - Spanish”. You must also state (in the description) whether you will write the review in English or another language.
• Blogs with very little traffic and/or links, may be rejected .

Net Business Blog managed to get a rating of 3 out of 5 which I’m pretty happy with considering I don’t even have a shot to try out the other programs. With the rating they give you a “suggested” price for your reviews. For NBB it was $20-$100. I set my price at $100 which fortunately didn’t seem to stop Sponsored Reviews from giving me a review opportunity (it may be automated, but I don’t think it was).

The main problem with Sponsored Reviews at the moment is their advertiser pool. There are very little opportunities right now which I’m sure is partly due to the fact that they just recently went public but also because they simply don’t have the budget of PayPerPost and ReviewMe. If they want to compete with the big boys they’re going to have to do better to draw in more advertisers. After I set my price I went into their opportunities to see what was available and saw only 1 current opportunity that fit my niche. That’s definitely discouraging.

Overall I think Sponsored Reviews is on the right track. They have a long way to go to start competing with the likes of PPP and RM, but they’re already leaps and bounds over other services like Blogvertise (which sucks by the way).

Sponsored by: Sponsored Reviews

Popularity: 5% [?]

Since I just went on a little rant about paid blog reviews, I figured my next subject might as well be paid forum posting. When I say paid forum posting, it’s a bit different from paid blog reviews in that the forum owner pays a third party to post on his forum (as opposed to bloggers getting paid by a third party to post on their blog). So why would someone pay a company to post on their own forum?

1) Gives the Illusion of Activity

This is the main reason for paid forum posting. One of the hardest hurdles to overcome for a new forum owner is getting those initial visitors to sign up. This is mostly difficult because of the fact that forums are attractive only when they are a thriving community, so when new potential members stumble into your site and see that there is no activity they often leave before giving it a chance. Paid forum posting makes your forums seem active during your posting campaign which may lead visitors to register more quickly.

Keep in mind that this is just an illusion of activity - paid forum posting is never a long-term solution to an inactivity problem. Once your campaign runs out those paid posters on onto their next $0.25 per post (or whatever the hell they charge) job.

2) Inflates the Numbers

Numbers are what make forums valuable. Believe it or not we’re in bubble 2.0 and forums are leading. You know that old 12x monthly revenue formula you apply to most websites? Throw that out when you’re talking about forums. Forums are selling for 24-36x monthly revenue based on little more than posting numbers. Maybe this should be a topic for a new post altogether eh?

In any case, paid forum posting gives you more members, more threads, and more posts. Simple as that. Every penny you invest into paid posting you can use as leverage when you sell ad space or decide to flip your forum.

3) Acts as a Personal Motivater

This is sort of an anectdotal point. When I purchased paid forum posting last year for my infant forum I realized just how inactive it was. The paid forum posters were talking to themselves and no-one else. This acted as a great motivater to get me to get more users in there so I could actually get what I paid for! Why pay for paid posters to chit chat? You have to give them *real* users to get your money’s worth.

Now that I have the “good” aspects of paid posting, lets tackle the bad.

1) Generates Little to No Real Activity

The main reason *to* used paid posting is that it is advertised to be able to help you generate activity. Paid forum posting companies rarely come straight out and say “we will single-handedly jump-start your forum” but almost all of them advertise on the platform that having paid forum posters on your board will help increase registration rate thus growing your forum. Although whether or not they do this is arguable, I personally think they don’t.

One would think that having activity on the board - whether paid or not - would generate a higher % of registrations, but that’s assuming the paid posters are hustling and bustling making the forum seem really active. Companies often include in the wee itty bitty fine print that the average job usually takes 1-3 months to complete. Now if you were buying 100 posts that were all put up in the period of a weekend (say while at the same time you were driving tons of traffic) then I can see how paid posting might work wonders. But when paid posters are posting 1 post a day over the period of 3 months, how is that effective in the slightest?

I’ve used 3 separate companies (all of which were suggested, none of which I’ll disclose, so don’t ask me) and none of them finished on time.

2) Paid Forum Posters Are ***Mostly*** Kids

Before I start, just be sure you notice that I qualified that statement with ***mostly***. Paid forum posting is not only a very low-paying job but it is also a boring one. Often times paid posters are forced to post on boards that they are uninterested in for little more than a few pennies per post. This in turn brings mostly teenagers to the workforce, and we all know how teenagers are. I was one just a few years ago, but it’s amazing how fast you grow up when you’re paying your own bills. Years make a difference. Do not trust your online presence to teenagers.

Note: I’m sure there are many notable teenagers, but I’m speaking in general here so get off my back.

3) Where’d [user] Go?

Another big problem with paid posting is that after the job is done, the posters are gone. You expected that though, and you only wanted to use the initial paid posting to gain registrations. So lets say you actually did get quite a few people to register as a result of your paid posting experiment. Have you ever thought of how your users might react when 20-30 of your most active users magically vanish after a month or two? It isn’t pretty. If you do hire paid forum posters and they actually do somehow work, be ready for some crowd control afterwards.

Conclusion - Is Paid Forum Posting Worth it?

No. It’s expensive and yields very little returns. You’d be better off just begging some of your friends to post for a while, ninja-stealing members from other boards, and maybe even running a forum competition or two. But paid posting? Not cost effective at all.

Popularity: 25% [?]

About a week ago I asked Is SEO Easy? You guys responded with 100 votes (the most I’ve ever gotten on a poll). Here are the results:

Mostly Easy took it with 47 votes (47%) but Mostly Difficult was on its coattail with 30 votes. Very Difficult got smashed with only 5 votes. Here’s what some of the readers had to say about the topic:

In my opinion search engine optimization is far away from being easy. Easily you can only attack phrases like “french processed cheese rocks” ;-) - Florchakh

I think it’s mostly easy for people that know web development (like myself), but if you don’t then you’re going to have a tough time with it… so I think it’s mostly difficult for most people, but I voted mostly easy. :D - Ryan

I personally voted for Mostly Easy (as you can tell). I believe that SEO in general can be done by anybody with relatively little knowledge. In addition there are a ton of great SEO resources out there (like SEOBook) that lowers the learning curve tremendously. However, as with everything there is a point in SEO where it becomes much more difficult and harder to rank. Anything competitive cannot be easy across the board. You’re always going to have people at the top who make their careers out of this stuff and make it hard when you get to their level. For the most part though I think SEO is fairly easy. If you do the basic on-site stuff (keyword density, domain considerations, etc) mixed with some healthy link-building I think you’ll do fine. But if you want to be on page 1 on Google for phentermine you have a lot of work to do.

Anyways, onto the next poll: How Should I Label My Affiliate Links? As always you can just cruise on down to the bottom of my sidebar on the right to participate! This poll directly impacts your reading experience here so I hope you all take a second to vote and let me know what you think!

Popularity: 9% [?]

Everything in life requires incentive to do. It may be something as small as natural enjoyment or it may be a monetary reward. At the end of the day there is no choice we make in life that is without an incentive. Which brings me to paid reviews. Paid reviews are basically sponsored blog posts where an advertiser pays for a blogger to review his product, site, or even blog often through third party review programs such as PayPerPost* and ReviewMe*.

Many accuse people who accept paid reviews as “selling out” by allowing paid posts to appear on their blogs. I disagree. For starters, there is no rule that says bloggers can’t make money. When weblogs started they were mostly personal journals with poems, pictures, and gossip, but they have developed into what you see today. Many blogs are now professional blogs, so to say that a blogger should be “more worried about content” and less worried about his income is stupid.

Another argument against paid reviews is that when a blogger posts one of these reviews it is not really his words, it is what the advertiser wants to see. This one is a little bit more tricky. Yes there are a lot of bloggers out there who go into ad-zombie mode when they post a paid review, and there are even many who run blogs dedicated solely to paid reviews. But does that mean there is no way to post a paid review while retaining your personal voice as well as the trust of your readers? I don’t think so. To do this there are a couple things that need to be present: 1) full disclosure and 2) you have to either enjoy the product/service you’re reviewing or be willing to give a negative review. If both of these elements are in your review then I really don’t see how your audience could hold it against you.

Payment is an Incentive

If you start a blog just to make money, I honestly do not think you will ever reach your full potential. Blogging is a different platform than any other type of online presence. With blogging more than anything you have to be passionate about what you write about and have plenty to say. If you just throw up a blog with dollar signs in your eyes you might see some success but you will never get to the point you want. Your first priority with your blog should always be to generate quality, readable content.

That being said, an obvious second priority is of course money! Running a blog takes a lot of work, time, and dedication so why shouldn’t you be rewarded for that? Payment is just an incentive. It is an incentive to write about a product/service that you may or may not normally write about. Payment does not make you like the product. Payment does not (or at least it shouldn’t) make you accept each and every ReviewMe request that comes your way! Payment should always just be an incentive.

When picking out products/services to review you should always think first and foremost “how will this fit into my niche and how will readers respond?” If you get a review request for something totally off the wall (and turst me, you will) you obviously do not want to put that in your blog. That sounds like common sense but you would be amazed at how many people write about stuff that has nothing to do with their niche, thus giving more bad rap to paid reviews. Secondly you should think “do I like this product or does the advertiser allow me to give a negative review?” You never ever want to give a positive review to a product you don’t like. Not only will your readers be annoyed when they realize for themselves that the product you just praised turns out to suck, but they will be able to see right through your ad-zombie routine. Your readers know you, it’s a blog. They will know when you’re rehashing the boring crap you read in the ReviewMe brief. Lastly you should ask yourself “do I need the money?” You’ll probably always say yes to that, but I’m just throwing it up to illustrate where it should lie in your list of priorities.

Paid reviews are a great way to earn additional revenue, and as soon as my blog hits 3 months old (the minimum cutoff for PPP and ReviewMe) I plan on implementing them here. But you can rest assured that I will never endorse a product I don’t like, and I will never lie about whether or not a review is sponsored.

* These are affiliate marketing links. Not sure what affiliate marketing is?

Popularity: 4% [?]

A regular reader of NBB, derrich, has just posted his bloggers bracket for 2007 where he pits blogger against blogger much like Daniel’s Blogger Face-Off series.

Right now I’m up against Nomar, John is facing HMTK, Shoemoney is up against Matt Propst (poor Propst), and Steve Pavlina is facing Jane/John from Career Ramblings. All in all it looks like some nerdy fun for everyone. If you have a couple minutes to kill, head over to derrich’s blog and vote for your four favorite bloggers (only comments with 4 total votes will count).

Popularity: 4% [?]

Spotplex was launched a little while back but really hit the scene hard when it was featured by Michael Arrington of TechCrunch. Michael had this to say about the service:

A new site called Spotplex launched today that arguably sorts news in a better way than Digg does. I’ve been testing the service for the last couple of weeks and like what I’ve seen.

There’s an obvious reason why Michael would like Spotplex more than Digg: it promotes content based on how often it is read rather than how many community votes it accrues. On the surface that sounds like it might be a decent idea. If content is good it will undoubtably be accessed more than content that is bad, right? Probably! So where’s the flaw?

The flaw is that Spotplex does not really reward good content as much as it rewards highly-read blogs. With Digg the little guy at least stands somewhat of a chance at getting their stories read if they jump through the loops and, above all, write good content. Spotplex on the other hand does not promote stories this way. It only frontpages articles that receive a massive amount of page views which are generated by massively read blogs. The result is a mash of the most popular blogs on the net. In all honestly Spotplex is little more than the trendiest RSS compilation on the planet.

But Matt, if someone writes good content there’s a good chance that others will link to it, increasing its page views, and in turn getting it featured on Spotplex right? Ideally, yes. Good content is in fact rewarded with backlinks and more page views which could theoretically get it featured on the main page. But lets be realistic. I could have the best article ever published on the net, but chances of it producing enough spike traffic to get my stories lifted above the juggernauts is slim to none.

Michael has an idea that might alleviate this somewhat:

I’ve suggested to Spotplex that the rankings be based on a publication competing with itself - so only very popular stories on TechCrunch (compared to average TechCrunch traffic) would get to the Spotplex home page. The Spotplex team has said that they’ll be tweaking their algorithm constantly after launch based on real data they get from the beta.

That may work, but I still don’t think it will reward the best content. I think instead we’ll just have a bunch of linkbait stories on the frontpage. Not to mention the fact that if one blog gets Dugg it will skyrocket to the frontpage of Spotplex making it little more than a Digg aggregator!

My verdict: Spotplex sucks. It is a service rewarding the established bloggers and nothing more. And lets be honest, do we need another site dedicated to content that is already read by everyone anyway?

Note: I’m not saying big blogs such as TechCrunch don’t produce quality content, but Spotplex just rewards the popularity, not the content.

Popularity: 6% [?]

Tony over at DeepJiveInterests wonders whether or not social networking is just a fad. I’m not sure you can really use this research to determine the longevity of social networking, but if you’re looking for a “state of social media” research for the present day you should check out this post.

John just found out that his blog is blocked in China! Fortunately NBB can be accessed (according to the site). I guess the Chinese didn’t like John ranting about how they have restaurants made of gold where people can pay $150 to eat live lobster? Or maybe this is just another link in John’s seemingly endless ban chain.

Shoemoney and Darren both got threatened to have their Adsense accounts robbed by super awesome money-stealing robots if they didn’t pay a monthly stipend. I personally think this is a viral marketing campaign for the new Transformers movie.

EarnersBlog just put up an article marketing experiment that is definitely worth the read. This is something that I have done in the past (on a very very small scale due to my pure laziness) and did I see results. If you are interested in making some spare change from writing articles you should give this some consideration.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’ve heard a lot of mixed opinion on the question of affiliate link disclosure. What I’m talking about here is what should a blogger do to inform the reader that a link they post on their page is an affiliate link rather than your normal run of the mill hyperlink? Many of the blogs I read put a little (aff) next to their affiliate links - (aff) meaning affiliate link. Does this count as disclosure? And possibly an even better question, is affiliate link disclosure even needed especially in this form?

The purpose of affiliate links is to earn the publisher a commission by linking to a product or service in a manner which gives them credit for the customers they send. So what’s so wrong about that? The problem with affiliate links is that readers question their motives. Many feel that by including an affiliate link without proper disclosure that the publisher is trying to trick the reader into making that publisher money. What makes this even worse is that in many cases, it is true. There are plenty of affiliate marketers out there (in fact I would argue the majority) that want to generate leads and commission anyway they can, including passing off affiliate links as non-commercial links.

So how does a publisher practice proper disclosure?

Mark over at 45n5 made a post that got me thinking about this. He asserts “saying that (aff) is there for the smarter, more initiated visitors, insults their intelligence that they can’t tell the difference between an affiliate link and a regular one, no?” All I have to say to you Mark is I completely agree! Jim Kukral takes it one further by saying “I’m an Affiliate Marketer & My Blog Has Affiliate Links. What Else Should You Expect?” The fact that every one of his readers know that he makes his living from affiliate marketing, he argues, should be disclosure enough. I agree with this as well.

As Jim outlines, the question boils down to intent. If I intend to get one over on you by sneaking in a slimy affiliate link with my seemingly legitimate post then that is obviously bad. But if I basically tell you “hey, I make money through affiliate links, so please use them if you are interested in the product or service I am promoting,” what is the harm? Does putting a little (aff) next to my affiliate links suddenly make me want to make less money? Does that convey the attitude of “click it if you want, but if not I don’t care”. No. So why is it needed? The only argument I can fathom is that some people honestly don’t know what an affiliate link is and should be informed what they’re doing before they do it (ie. clicking the link and earning me money).

Another point in this argument is why am I including affiliate links in my posts to begin with? If I put an affiliate link in one of my posts just to make money anyway I can I am going to catch flack for it. I am going to have people come back (after finding out that the product I’m endorsing is lame) and blessing my ass out. Keeping that in mind, I only include affiliate links to products I actually endorse and use/would use myself! Knowing this, why does it matter if I put (aff) next to the link? Using this logic, wouldn’t the products I plug pay testament enough to my intentions?

I guess my point with all this is that I honestly believe in the affiliate products I push here on my blog. Does it take away from my reputation that I don’t put (aff) next to them? I personally don’t think so, but then again there are a few thousand other opinions that I have to take into account. What do you guys think? Is (aff) really necessary or should I assume that my readers (in the webmaster niche) are familiar enough with affiliate links to make it unneeded?

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’ve just finished a new article over at Forum Rank that goes over the benefits and pitfalls of running forum competitions.

Forum competitions are an increasingly popular way to attract visitors and incite interest in a forum, particularly if you are just getting started or simply need something to freshen up the boards. Many successful forums run regular competitions as a means to generate continued interest in the forum, incite competition between its members, or simply to provide casual visitors with a reason to register. The real beauty of running a competition is that the prize itself does not have to be particularly valuable or difficult to obtain – small cash prizes or vouchers for popular online retailers can generate huge interest and give you an excellent return for the relatively small investment. Services are also popular prizes, and if you can supply them yourself, may be a more cost effective solution depending on what you have to offer.

You can read the rest of the article here. If you enjoy it, it’s also on Digg. Let me know what you guys think of it.

Popularity: 15% [?]

Alright Saturday readers, I have a treat for you - I’m starting a new feature that will roll out once every single Saturday starting now. So enjoy you nerdy weekend warriors.

I’ve had a lot of people asking me to turn this blog into a money-making case study like John Chow’s. I have a couple reasons why I’m not doing this. First off the fact that this blog’s audience is mostly people looking to make money, the fact that I would be using it as a case study would inflate the number of visitors and interested readers simply because they want to learn how to make money from their own blog. This is all well and good, but it would not be an accurate case study due to the fact that the majority of blogs are *not* blogs on blogging, so making money that way would not really represent the market as a whole. In addition, I just don’t want to be labeled as one of those “if you can’t, teach” people. So what am I going to do?

I’m going to start a blog in a completely unrelated niche and document each and every step from SEO to content generation to promotion for you guys to read. Hopefully I will be able to make this project profit and give a nice template for exactly how to start and promote a new blog even if you’re not blogging on how to make money blogging.

Will I succeed? I hope so. But I’m going to go ahead and warn you guys, I’ve never started a blog in this niche before, so a lot of the stuff I’m doing will be guess and check, trial and error. I do expect the blog to eventually succeed and I will be doing recaps every so often detailing what worked best for me. The main point of this case study is to, at the end of the experiment, have a fairly general blueprint for starting a niche blog and making it successful.

The Niche

For this case study I wanted to target something that I can personally spend a lot of time writing on but broad enough so that my strategies can be replicated across as many other niches as possible. I’ve settled on a rock and roll blog. Why? Because I’m a fan of rock and roll. It will also give me a reason to go to as many concerts as I can, buy more albums, and get involved more in the underground scene.

I will be announcing the domain next week.

Design/Development

I’m currently having the site designed by a friend of mine because I rarely am able to design something that suites me. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m a lame designer or because I am just too picky to make myself a design I like. In any case it is being worked on now and should be finished and implemented in a couple of days. The software I am using is Wordpress because I am already familiar with it, and it has a ton of plugins and add-ons. As far as the coding goes, a friend of mine owes me something, but I will still be factoring in the typical cost of coding into my budget.

The Budget

What would be a case study without a budget? I want to try to keep overhead down as much as possible on this case study to, again, make the process easily repeatable by readers. I’ve settled on an even $500/mo for my budget. I think that is fair enough for anyone to reach. Sure you can start a blog on $0, but the point of this case study is to try to make a successful blog in as short a time frame as possible.

The design and development will take up most of my budget for the first month which means I will have to use as many free/almost free methods of promotion to begin with. From what I’ve seen this is the best way to start a blog anyways, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem.

Content/Promotion

The content is all going to be written by me to begin with (unless a couple people want to volunteer ;)). My fiance has offered to write some, but she is very busy with school so I doubt she will really have time to contribute all that much. That is fine with me though because for the most part I’m the only writer here, and I manage fine. Hopefully this won’t be any different.

The promotion is, in my opinion, going to be the most important part. I have confidence in my writing style and ability to create quality content, but I’m honestly going into this thing blind as far as promoting a rock and roll blog. I have a couple of ideas to start off with and will be researching and implementing them starting with the ones I decide to be best. Here’s one example:

Digg - I had great success with Digg for this blog, and I am planning on getting at least 3-5 stories Dugg in the Entertainment category just to see what kind of reach it generates. As I’ve said many times before, with Digg I’m not so much interested in the spike traffic as much as how well the story gets aggregated to other sources and picked up by other blogs. This worked extremely well in the Technology section, but I’ll have to wait and see if it’s an effective method for Entertainment.

Once I get the blog up I will go into more detail on what exactly I plan to do as far as promotion. I don’t want anybody really getting the jump on my ideas before I have a chance to implement them. The Digg one was a given, but some of the others might be a little more unique and I’d like to wait until I at least have the site up before I give them away.

So there you have it, the full introduction to the case study. What do you guys think? Does this sound like it will be worth the read? I’m also totally open to any user suggestions as far as how I should run the case study or how I should develop the actual blog. I’ve never been one to turn away advice, so if you have a suggestion you can reply to one of my posts or contact me.

Popularity: 7% [?]