Pay Per Post: What's the Deal?

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An awful lot of folks have their knickers in a knot over DFJ’s latest investment, Pay Per Post.  The company bills it as a new form of blog advertising.  The business concept is pretty simple: just as you can post a request on RentACoder, or ELance to have someone code you up small programming projects, on Pay Per Post you can ask for bloggers to write about a particular topic, and pay them for it.

The digerati complain that it’s deceptive, and that it’s turning the blogosphere into one giant advertorial.  TechCrunch opines that Pay Per Post wants to “buy your soul“.  Curious, I joined, and frankly, the controversy is unwarranted. 

There are currently just 91 open postings on Pay Per Post.  Most are for very specific niches.  One is a realtor that wants you to write about Kirkland Washington.  Another is a company trying to get bloggers to write about Beach Cruiser Bikes.  And a third is a site trying to draw attention to itself as an independent reviewer of body building supplements.  There was exactly one site with a VoIP theme — a forum for Vonage users, trying to draw attention to itself.  Out of 91 listings, I found three that were vaguely related to this site, offering me an opportunity to earn a grand total of $23.50.

In other words, not much of an incentive to write.  If you were really determined, I suppose, you could write 10 posts per day, and get through all 91 listings in nine days.  Given that most of the listings are paying $4 to $5, with the occasional $10 listing thrown in, you’d be lucky to make $60/day for your effort… if you wrote on every topic being offered.

Could you really write about every topic that they offered?  Credibly? I just went to the doctor yesterday for my annual physical.  I’m 42 years old, and 40 lbs overweight.  Somehow I can’t seem myself as a reviewer of a site offering body-building supplements. 

And that, in a nutshell, is why most bloggers are likely to take a pass on Pay Per Post.

Alec Saunders is the Vice President of Developer Relations for BlackBerry maker Research in Motion. This is his personal blog, with his personal viewpoints. Prior to this Alec was the CEO and co-founder of Calliflower — the easiest way to hold a meeting, online, on a conference call, or on the go. A double-decade veteran of product management and marketing, he spent nine years at Microsoft where he helped launch Windows 95, the first two versions of Internet Explorer, the Universal Plug and Play initiative, the push into home markets, opt-in email marketing and what might well go down in history as the very first direct email list ever.