FreshYields - Ecommerce and Internet Marketing Solutions

I’ve been stumbling upon many blogs lately that are participating in sponsored review programs, like PayPerPost and ReviewMe. I don’t know about you, but the reviews are starting to annoy me. I used to be able to just skip by them when they were posted once in a blue moon. But now I am running across blogs that will have 4 review posts, followed by one “original” post, then 4 more reviews. What’s the difference between a site like this and a splog?

I understand how this can be useful for an advertiser with a very targeted campaign, but what is stopping said company from going directly to the influential blogger and negotiating directly? Oh, that’s right, this is really all about SEO. After all, the review costs are determined by Google Pagerank and Alexa Rankings. It’s probably cheaper and more efficient to buy a couple PR4 reviews than hire an SEO expert for a couple of hours for some link building. And forget about trying to convince a single A-list bloggers to review your product on their blog when you can buy your way onto a myriad of blogs lesser in statue for a similar cost.

And what about sales? Does CTR matter? Is the review the same as a giant CPM banner that gets buried into a blogger’s archive in a week?

The great thing about the internet is that trends run in cycles. Will the sponsored review phenomenon last? Not in it’s current form. Here’s where I see it heading, which I think would be a good thing. Why not have the advertiser pay the upfront fee like they do now, but offer an affiliate tracking link and commissions for sales conversions? Both sides would win. The advertiser gets the SEO link that they are currently paying for, and potential a new sales channel. The blogger gets paid for the placing the “review” on their site, and can earn commissions by referring their readers to the advertiser’s site and completing a sale. Bloggers have been slapping affiliate links on their sites like it’s going out of style, but I’m willing to venture that a majority of them aren’t rolling in the commission dough. By giving them a little cash up front, they may be encouraged to write a better, more focused review. The cookie could be tracked through the permalink for the article, which may be necessary if(when) google continues to devalues affiliate-type links in it’s algorithm.

What are your thoughts? Are you making good money through blog reviews? Better yet, for the advertisers, are your sales increasing directly from the reviews, or more from the link-building SEO benefits?

After having our little startup live for 2 weeks, many questions have popped up about whether we are doing things the right way and if we are headed down the right path. The major issue we have is marketing.

We decided to jump in with a live beta without a marketing plan. Was this a smart decision? Right now the answer is “We Don’t Know”. We saw a need for the site we were designing, and wanted to get it out there as soon as possible. But very rarely can you rely on the “build it and they will come” mantra. Maybe some PR is needed? We know this. But we have been able to get a feel on how users will use the service during the last 2 weeks, which will go a long way in helping us define some of the goals in a marketing plan.

We also have begun writing notes for a business plan. The major question we have is, “How the heck are we going to monetize this thing without spamming our users?” Are we in this for the money? Honestly? No and yes. Short term, we want to create a great and useful product. My wife and some of her fellow bloggers were frustrated with the social bookmarking sites out there because there really wasn’t one that was family-based. We are trying to fill that void by creating a place where mommy and daddy bloggers can quickly find and share stories from everyday life. But if this takes off, the bills will rack up, whether it is server and development costs, or just the amount of time and effort we put into it.

Like Chad Randall, I hate Google Adsense. It’s just not for me, although I know it has it’s place. Yes, we have some on our site right now. It’s a placeholder. We’ve gotten one click. I’ll be happy to donate the few cents we earned. I honestly don’t think it’s fair to have adsense ads next to content that other people have written, especially when they may have their own adsense ads on their own site with the original post. We would hope that you click through the the full article, then check out their own ads. But again, with success come bills, so we are looking at revenue-generating alternatives.

So are we blindly going down the right path? Time will tell, I guess. What do you think?

Back in the old days, marketing was simple. Outside of a nasty story in an editorial section of the newspaper (and you had to be real bad), the reputation of a company was developed by it’s marketing department through press releases and advertising campaigns.

Nowadays you have to deal with bloggers, social media, reviews on ecommerce sites, message boards, and more. Your company’s name might be as good as mud, and you have no idea. Let’s give an example scenario:

You work in the ecommerce marketing department for Home Depot. Things are going great. You have no idea that right now on Digg you are being called out for having bogus reviews on your site. There have been 563 diggs coming from a post on this blog. Add to that 62 comments on Digg.com, 7 users blogging about it after digging it, and 57 comments on the originating website. All of this in a week or so. What if the accusations are not true? Wouldn’t you want to defend your company from a potential loss in business?

Now the Home Depot may not be the best example, as I’m sure they could handle a situation like this rather easily. But what about your business? Are you prepared to suffer a huge online reputation hit without ever knowing? Are you prepared to see a slowdown in sales or leads without a clear explanation?

There is now a site available that can help the discovery process. ACS has release Serph.com out of beta. From their website, here is how Serph works:

When you type a query into Serph, it goes out and searches online social media to find the latest buzz. After it gathers the results, they are sorted and organized so the most recent buzz appears first. Serph gathers these results from blog search engines, social media websites, social news websites and social bookmarking websites. This allows Serph to show you exactly what people are saying on the web right now.

Entering “Home Depot” in the search box yields 8 pages of results for the previous day. In this case, the digg.com story is not included since serph was still in beta. But with the number of diggs, blog posts, and comments that are attached to this one story, I guarantee you that your online reputation is taking a hit.

Now how are you going to attack this? If it’s true, then you have to remedy the problem. Take down the fake reviews. If it causes damage, maybe issue a press release clarifying the issue. Hell, blame it on a renegade employee trying to be too ambitious. But if it’s not true, you need go on the offensive, clearly explaining the situation wherever your can. You never know, you may win over some of the diggers of the original story.

Home Depot is big enough that they probably have staff already available that can deal with issues like these. But is your business ready?

Let me preface this post by stating that the affiliate programs I am talking about deal with physical goods, like those you would buy from Amazon. This post does not reference downloadable content or survey/subscription models. It also does not refer to product review blogs.

So you’ve decided to monetize your blog, and are searching for the best way to do so. There are tons of programs out there, like PPC programs, sponsored reviews, and the topic of this post, affiliate links. PPC programs can be confusing to some new bloggers, and may take some time to master. The results are easy to track, and percentages say that if you get enough traffic, you will make at least some money. Sponsored reviews usually have qualifications based on PageRank and Alexa ranking, which may not be available until your blog matures. But they are perfect for low-inspiration days. So that leaves us with Affliliate Marketing.

What could be easier than applying for some affiliate programs and slapping some links and banners on your site? The are many programs that automatically approve you once you’ve been accepted into LinkShare, CJ, Shareasale, or one of the other affiliate networks.

I just can’t see affiliate banners being a good idea for a blog. Typically, banner ads use a CPM (cost per thousand impressions) model. This is great for branding and reputation. Affiliate banners are CPA (cost per action). That better be on convincing banner ad to result in a sale. Affiliate Links are a better idea, especially when the product you are pushing fits in the context of what you are blogging about. But how many people typically click on your links? This should be the first indicator of whether or not an affiliate link is going to be successful. Of those that click on the link, how many are going to actually result in a sale?

One blog I helped set up had been running affiliate banners for about 2 months, but recently canned them altogether. The blog generated decent traffic for a new blog, but only resulted in one sale, netting the owner $4.00. She found the banner to be obtrusive and distracting to her readers, so we took them off.

I am running one affiliate banner here right now, for TextLinkAds. If you are a blogger, I believe that a program like this might be best, as it targets other bloggers, who probably make up a large percentage of your readership. I am also offering to throw in a free review as an incentive, making it a little different than typical affiliate links.

So what do you guys think? Am I was off base here? I knot that there are many blogs out there making good money off affiliate programs. But what percentage? .1%? If Technorati is correct in saying there are 55 million blogs, then that means 55,000 blogs are making good money off affiliate programs. We can probably be safe in saying the .001% is closer to the right percentage. Are your online marketing skills in the top 99.999%?

The other day I wrote about implementing Text Link Ads here at Fresh Yields. Well, that went over so well (I still have no sponsors), I decided to try out another advertising solution in Kontera. After adding the provided code to your site, Kontera scans your site for keywords and places PPC ads within your content. When users scroll over the Kontera links, a small window pops up with the ad inside. Amazon has started a similar program, which my wife trying out over at her site.

Here is my problem. I usually don’t imbed too many links in my blog posts, but now with Kontera, there are links everywhere. Just take a look at my last post. I’m keeping the double-underline and non-bold font for the Kontera ads so they will be a little less spammish, but did change the link color to match my normal links. You can certainly make your normal links and Kontera links look identical. It’s up to you to decide if that would piss off your readers or not.

How do you feel about in-text advertising programs like this? Are they too spammy, or can they be a good source of revenue for your blog?

btw, I have no idea how I got accepted. The qualifications include “Generate more than 500,000 page impressions per month“. Once they find out, they will probably pull the ads

I’ve decided to slowly work ads into this blog, partly to make some money (at least enough for hosting), but mostly to experiment with some of the newer non-AdSense advertising programs. First up is Text Link Ads*. Right now, I have none :). They would be located in my sidebar menu, under the label that says “Sponsors”.

Applying to Text Link Ads is easy enough, but it seems that things go much smoother if you have a PageRank of 4 or greater. Now it’s just a matter of waiting for advertisers to buy links on your site. We’ll see how it goes, and I will be happy to report on any progress. Of course, you will be able to see progress as my Sponsors area (hopefully) fills up.

Here is where you would go to buy a link on my site: Sponsor Fresh Yields. Because my Alexa ranking is so low, it only costs you $15 a month to get your link on a PR4 blog. If you buy a link, I will also dedicate at least one blog post reviewing your site, using keywords where appropriate.